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SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 



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SHAKESPEARE'S 
ENGLAND 



BY 



WILLIAM WINTER 




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New Edition, Revised, with Illustrations 



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MACMILLAN AND CO. 



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All rights reserved 



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Copyright, 1892, 
By MACMILLAN & CO. 

Illustrated Edition, 

Copyright, 1893, 

By MACMILLAN AND CO. 



First published elsewhere. 

Set up and electrotyped by Macmillan & Co., April, 1892. 

Reprinted November, 1892; January, 1893. 

Illustrated edition, revised throughout, in crown 8vo, set up and 

electrotyped June, 1893. 









Nartocoti ^rrss : 

J. S. Cushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith. 

Boston, Mass., U.S.A. 



TO 



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IN HONOUR OF EXALTED VIRTUES 

ADORNING A LIFE OF 

NOBLE ACHIEVEMENT AND PATIENT KINDNESS 

AND IN REMEMBRANCE OF 

FAITHFUL AND GENTLE FRIENDSHIP 

I DEDICATE THIS BOOK 



" Turn meae, si quid loquar audiendwn, 
Vocis accedet bona pars " 



PREFACE TO THE ILLUSTRATED EDITION 
OF SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 



The favour with wliicJi this book has been received, 
alike in Great Britain and America, is thought to 
warrant a reproduction of it with pictorial ejnbellish- 
ment, and accordingly it is offered in the present form. 
I have revised the text for this reprint, and my friejid 
Mr. George P. Brett, of the house of Messrs. Mac- 
mi llan and Company, — at whose suggestion the pictorial 
edition zvas undertaken, — has supervised the choice of 
pictures for its adornment. The approval that the work 
has elicited is a source of deep gratification. It signifies 
that my endeavour to reflect the gentle sentiment of 
English landscape and the romantic character of English 
rural life has not proved altogether in vain. It also 
shozvs that an appeal may confidently be made, — irre- 
spective of transitory literary fashions and of popular 
caprice, — to the love of the ideal, the taste for simplicity, 
and the sentiment of veneration. In these writings there 
is, I hope, a profound practical deference to the perfect 
standard of style that is represented by sucli illustrious 
exemplars as Addison, Goldsmith, Sterne, and Gray. 

i 



2 PREFACE 

This frail fabric may perish : that standard is im- 
mortal ; and whatever merit this book may possess is 
due to an instinctive and passionate devotion to the 
ideal denoted by those shining names. These sketches 
were written ont of love for the subject. The first 
book of them, called The Trip to England, reprinted, 
with changes, from the New York Tribune, was made 
for me, at the De Vi?mc Press. The subsequent 
growth of the work is traced in the earlier Preface, 
herewith reprinted. The title of Shakespeare's Eng- 
land was given to it when the first English edition 
was published, by Mr. David Douglas, of Edinburgh. 
It has been my privilege to 7nake various tours of 
the British islands, since those of 1877 and 1882, 
recorded here; and my later books, Gray Days and 
Gold, and Old Shrines and Ivy, should be read in 
association with this one, by those persons who care 
for a wider glimpse of the same deligJitful field, in 
the same companionship, and especially by those who 
like to follow the record of exploration and change in 
Shakespeare's home. As to the question of accuracy, — 
a? id indeed, as to all other questions, — it is my wish 
that this book may be judged by the text of the present 
edition, which is the latest and the best. 

IV. IV. 

Ji'xe 6, 1893. 




Beautiful and storied scenes that have soothed and 
elevated the mind naturally inspire a feeling of gratitude. 
Prompted by that feeling the present author has written 
this record of his rambles in England. It was his wish, 
in dwelling upon the rural loveliness and the literary 
and historical associations of that delightful realm, to 
afford sympathetic guidance and useful suggestion to other 
American travellers who, like himself might be attracted 
to roam among the shrines of the mother land. There 
is no pursuit more fascinating or in a high intellectual 
sense more remunerative ; since it serves to define and 
regulate knowledge, to correct misapprehensions of fact, to 
broaden the mental vision, to ripen and refine the judg- 

3 



4 PREFACE 

ment and the taste, and to fill the memory with ennobling 
recollections. Tliese papers commemorate tzvo visits to 
England, the first made in 1877, the second in 1882; 
they occasionally toucli upon the same place or scene as 
observed at different times ; and especially they describe 
tzvo distinct journeys, separated by an interval of five 
years, through the region associated with the great name 
of SJiakespeare. Repetitions of the same reference, which 
noiv and then occur, were found unavoidable by the 
writer, but it is hoped that they zvill not be found tedious 
by the reader. Those zvho walk tzvice in the same path- 
zvays sJiould be pleased, and not pained, to find the same 
zvild-jlozvers growing beside them. The first American 
edition of this work consisted of tzvo volumes, publisJied 
in 1879, 1 88 1, and 1884, called The Trip to England 
and English Rambles. The former book was embel- 
lished with poetic illustrations by JoscpJi Jefferson, the 
famous comedian, my life-long friend. The paper on 
Shakespeare's Home, — written to record for Ameri- 
can readers the dedication of the Shakespeare Memorial 
at Stratford, — zvas first printed in Harper's Magazine, 
in May 1879, with delicate illustrative pictures from 
the graceful pencil of Edwin Abbey. This compen- 
dium of the Trip and the Rambles, with the title of 
Shakespeare's England, was first published by David 
Douglas of Edinburgh. That title zvas chosen for the 
reason that the book relates largely to Warwickshire and 
because it depicts not so much the England of fact as the 



PREFACE 5 

England created and hallowed by the spirit of her poetry, 
of which Shakespeare is the soul. Several months after 
the publication of Shakespeare's England the writer 
zvas told of a work, publisJicd many years ago, bearing a 
similar title, though relating to a different theme — the 
physical state of England in Shakespeare s time. He 
had never heard of it and has never seen it. The text 
for the present reprint has been carefully revised. To 
his British readers the author would say that it is neither 
from lack of sympathy with the happiness around him 
nor from lack of fait J i in the future of his country that 
his writings have drifted toward the pathos in human 
experience and toward the hallowing associations of an 
old Jiistoric land. Temperament is the explanation, of 
style : and he has written thus of England because she 
has filed his mind with beauty and his heart zvitJi 
mingled joy and sadness: and surely some memory of 
her venerable ruins, her ancient shrines, her rustic glens, 
her gleaming rivers, and her flozver-spanglcd meadows 
zvill mingle with the last thoughts that glimmer through 
his brain, when the shadows of the eternal night are 
falling and the ramble of life is done. 

W. IV. 
1892. 



CONTENTS 



Preface to Illustrated Edition 

Old Preface 

CHAPTER I. 
The Voyage 

CHAPTER II. 
The Beauty of England 

CHAPTER III. 
Great Historic Places 



CHAPTER IV. 



Rambles in London 



CHAPTER V. 
A Visit to Windsor 

CHAPTER VI. 
The Palace of Westminster . 

CHAPTER VII. 
Warwick and Kenilworth 

CHAPTER VIII. 
First View of Stratford-upon-Avon 

CHAPTER IX. 
London Nooks and Corners . 

7 



PAGE 

3 
5 



32 
38 
5i 
62 

7i 
78 
90 



8 CONTENTS 

PAGE 

CHAPTER X. 
Relics of Lord Byron . . . .98 

CHAPTER XL 
Westminster Abbey . . . . .104 

CHAPTER XII. 
Shakespeare's Home . . . . .118 

CHAPTER XIII. 
Up to London ...... 167 

CHAPTER XIV. 

Old Churches of London . . . .176 

CHAPTER XV. 
Literary Shrines of London . . . .186 

CHAPTER XVI. 
A Haunt of Edmund Kean . . . .195 

CHAPTER XVII. 
Stoke-Pogis and Thomas Gray . . . 200 

CHAPTER XVIII. 
At the Grave of Coleridge .... 208 

CHAPTER XIX. 
On Barnet Battle-field . . . .215 

CHAPTER XX. 
A Glimpse of Canterbury . . . .221 

CHAPTER XXI. 
The Shrines of Warwickshire . . . 230 

CHAPTER XXII. 
A Borrower of the Night . 244 




PAGE 

' Portrait of William Winter — from a crayon by Arthur Jule Good- 
man Frontispiece 

The Anchor Inn . . 19 

Old House at Bridport 20 

Restoration House, Rochester 25 

Charing Cross ........... 27 

Kensington Palace .......... 29 

* The Tower of London facing 34 

" Beef-eater facing 36 

Old Water Gate 37 

Approach to Cheshire Cheese -39 

St. Clement Danes 41 

Temple Church 43 

Gower's Monument 46 

Andrews's Monument 48 

Old Tabard Inn, Southwark 50 

Windsor Castle 52 

St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle 55 

Windsor Forest and Park 57 

The Curfew Tower .......... 59 

The Sign of the Swan 61 

Westminster Hall - . . '63 

The Mace 64 

Greenwich Hospital facing 68 

Queen Elizabeth's Cradle ......... 70 

9 



10 ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

Warwick Castle facing 72 

Old Inn 75 

Washington Irving's Parlour facing 76 

From the Warwick Shield ........ 77 

Holy Trinity Church, Stratford 79 

The Inglenook ........... 82 

Approach to Shottery 84 

Distant View of Stratford 89 

Whitehall Gateway facing 92 

Lambeth Palace facing 94 

Dulwich College facing 96 

The Crown Inn, Dulwich 97 

Oriel Window 103 

From the Triforium, Westminster Abbey 105 

Chapel of Henry VII 107 

Chapel of Edward the Confessor no 

The Poets' Corner 112 

The North Ambulatory 114 

The Spaniards, Hampstead 116 

The Dome of St. Paul's U7 

The Grange 119 

Shakespeare's Birthplace .122 

Anne Hathaway's Cottage 139 

Charlecote 143 

Meadow Walk by the Avon 146 

Antique Font 160 

Monument 162 

Gable Window 166 

Peveril Peak 168 

St. Paul's, from Maiden Lane 170 

The Charter-house 1 73 

St. Giles', Cripplegate ......... facing 180 



ILLUSTRATIONS 11 

PAGE 

Sir John Crosby's Monument . . . . . . . .182 

Gresham's Monument 183 

Goldsmith's House 184 

St. Helen's Church 185 

A Bit from Clare Court 188 

Fleet Street in 1780 191 

Gray's Inn Square 193 

Stoke-Pogis Church 202 

Old Church 207 

The White Hart 212 

Column on Barnet Battle-field 218 

Farm-house . 220 

Falstaff Inn and West Gate, Canterbury 222 

Butchery Lane, Canterbury 224 

Flying-horse Inn, Canterbury 227 

Canterbury Cathedral facing 228 

Stratford-upon-Avon 231 

Stratford Church facing 232 

Washington Irving's Chair 237 

The Stratford Memorial facing 240 

Mary Arden's Cottage 242 

Church of St. Martin 245 

Westminster Abbey 249 

Middle Temple Lane 251 



This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle, 

This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, 

This other Eden, demi-paradise, 

This fortress built by Nature for herself, . '. . 

This precious stone set in the silver sea, . . . 

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, 

This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land, 

Dear for her reputation through the world! 



Shakespeare. 



All that I saw returns upon my view ; 
All that I heard comes back upon my ear ; 
All that I felt this moment doth renew. 

Fair land! by Time's parental love made free, 
By Social Order's watchful arms embraced, 
With unexampled union meet in thee, 
For eye and mind, the present and the past ; 
With golden prospect for futurity, 
If that be reverenced which ought to last. 



Wordsworth. 




SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 



CHAPTER I 



THE VOYAGE 



1887 




HE coast-line recedes and disappears, and 
night comes down upon the ocean. Into 
what dangers will the great ship plunge ? 
Through what mysterious waste of waters 
will she make her viewless path ? The 
black waves roll up around her. The strong blast fills 
her sails and whistles through her creaking cordage. 
Overhead the stars shine dimly amid the driving clouds. 
Mist and gloom close in the dubious prospect, and a 
strange sadness settles upon the heart of the voyager — 
who has left his home behind, and who now seeks, for 
the first time, the land, the homes, and the manners of 
the stranger. Thoughts and images of the past crowd 
thick upon his remembrance. The faces of absent 
friends rise before him, whom, perhaps, he is destined 
nevermore to behold. He sees their smiles ; he hears 

J 5 



16 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

their voices ; he fancies them by familiar hearth-stones, 
in the light of the evening lamps. They are very 
far away now ; and already it seems months instead of 
hours since the parting moment. Vain now the pang 
of regret for misunderstandings, unkindness, neglect ; 
for golden moments slighted and gentle courtesies left 
undone. He is alone upon the wild sea — all the more 
alone because surrounded with new faces of unknown 
companions — and the best he can do is to seek his 
lonely pillow and lie down with a prayer in his heart 
and on his lips. Never before did he so clearly know 
— never again will he so deeply feel — the uncertainty 
of human life and the weakness of human nature. Yet, 
as he notes the rush and throb of the vast ship and the 
noise of the breaking waves around her, and thinks of 
the mighty deep beneath, and the broad and melancholy 
expanse that stretches away on every side, he cannot 
miss the impression — grand, noble, and thrilling — of 
human courage, skill, and power. For this ship is the 
centre of a splendid conflict. Man and the elements 
are here at war ; and man makes conquest of the ele- 
ments by using them as weapons against themselves. 
Strong and brilliant, the head-light streams over the 
boiling surges. Lanterns gleam in the tops. Dark 
figures keep watch upon the prow. The officer of the 
night is at his post upon the bridge. Let danger 
threaten howsoever it may, it cannot come unawares ; 
it cannot subdue, without a tremendous struggle, the 
brave minds and hardy bodies that are here arrayed to 
meet it. With this thought, perhaps, the weary voyager 
sinks to sleep ; and this is his first night at sea. 

There is no tediousness of solitude to him who has 



1 THE VOYAGE 17 

within himself resources of thought and dream, the 
pleasures and pains of memory, the bliss and the torture 
of imagination. It is best to have few acquaintances 
— or none — on shipboard. Human companionship, 
at some times, and this is one of them, distracts by its 
pettiness. The voyager should yield himself to nature 
now, and meet his own soul face to face. The routine 
of everyday life is commonplace enough, equally upon 
sea and land. But the ocean is a continual pageant, 
filling and soothing the mind with unspeakable peace. 
Never, in even the grandest words of poetry, was the 
grandeur of the sea expressed. Its vastness, its free- 
dom, its joy, and its beauty overwhelm the mind. All 
things else seem puny and momentary beside the life 
that this immense creation unfolds and inspires. Some- 
times it shines in the sun, a wilderness of shimmering 
silver. Sometimes its long waves are black, smooth, 
glittering, and dangerous. Sometimes it seems instinct 
with a superb wrath, and its huge masses rise, and clash 
together, and break into crests of foam. Sometimes it 
is gray and quiet, as if in a sullen sleep. Sometimes 
the white mist broods upon it and deepens the sense of 
awful mystery by which it is forever enwrapped. At 
night its surging billows are furrowed with long streaks 
of phosphorescent fire ; or, it may be, the waves roll 
gently, under the soft light of stars ; or all the waste 
is dim, save where, beneath the moon, a glorious path- 
way, broadening out to the far horizon, allures and 
points to heaven. One of the most .exquisite delights 
of the voyage, whether by day or night, is to lie upon 
the deck in some secluded spot, and look up at the tall, 
tapering spars as they sway with the motion of the 



18 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

ship, while over them the white clouds float, in ever- 
changing shapes, or the starry constellations drift, in 
their eternal march. No need now of books, or news- 
papers, or talk! The eyes are fed by every object 
they behold. The great ship, with all her white wings 
spread, careening like a tiny sail-boat, dips and rises, 
with sinuous, stately grace. The clank of her engines 
— fit type of steadfast industry and purpose — goes 
steadily on. The song of the sailors — " Give me 
some time to blow the man down" — rises in cheery 
melody, full of audacious, light-hearted thoughtlessness, 
and strangely tinged with the romance of the sea. Far 
out toward the horizon many whales come sporting and 
spouting along. At once, out of the distant bank of 
cloud and mist, a little vessel springs into view, and 
with convulsive movement — tilting up and down like 
the miniature barque upon an old Dutch clock — dances 
across the vista and vanishes into space. Soon a tem- 
pest bursts upon the calm ; and then, safe-housed from 
the fierce blast and blinding rain, the voyager exults 
over the stern battle of winds and waters and the stal- 
wart, undaunted strength with which his ship bears 
down the furious floods and stems the gale. By and 
by a quiet hour is given, when, met together with the 
companions of his journey, he stands in the hushed 
cabin and hears the voice of prayer and the hymn of 
praise, and, in the pauses, a gentle ripple of waves 
against the ship, which now rocks lazily upon the sunny 
deep ; and, ever and anon, as she dips, he can discern 
through her open ports the shining sea and the wheel- 
ing and circling gulls that have come out to welcome 
her to the shores of the old world. 



THE VOYAGE 



19 



The present writer, when first he saw the distant and 
dim coast of Britain, felt, with a sense of forlorn lone- 
liness that he was a stranger; but when last he saw 
that coast he beheld it through a mist of tears and knew 
that he had parted from many cherished friends, from 
many of the gentlest men and women upon the earth, 
and from a land henceforth as dear to him as his own. 
England is a country which to see is to love. As you 
draw near to her shores you are pleased at once with 
the air of careless finish 
and negligent grace that 
everywhere overhangs the 
prospect. The grim, wind- 
beaten hills of Ireland have 
first been passed — hills 
crowned, here and there, 
with dark, fierce towers 
that look like strongholds 
of ancient bandit chiefs, 
and cleft by dim valleys 
that seem to promise end- 
less mystery and romance, 
hid in their sombre depths. 
Passed also is white 
Queenstown, with its lovely 
little bay, its circle of green 
hillsides, and its valiant fort; and picturesque Fastnet, 
with its gaily painted tower, has long been left behind. 
It is off the noble crags of Holyhead that the voyager' 
first observes with what a deft skill the hand of art has 
here moulded nature's luxuriance into forms of seeming 
chance-born beauty; and from that hour, wherever in 




The Anchor Inn. 



20 



SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 



CHAP. 



rural England the footsteps of the pilgrim may roam, 
he will behold nothing but gentle rustic adornment, 
that has grown with the grass and the roses — greener 
grass and redder roses than ever we see in our western 
world! In the English nature a love of the beautiful 
is spontaneous, and the operation of it is as fluent 
as the blowing of the summer wind. Portions of 
English cities, indeed, are hard and harsh and coarse 
enough to suit the most utilitarian taste ; yet even in 
those regions of dreary monotony the national love of 

flowers will find ex- 
pression, and the peo- 
ple, without being 
aware of it, will, in 
many odd little ways, 
beautify their homes 
and make their sur- 
roundings pictorial, 
at least to stranger 
eyes. There is a tone 
of rest and home- 
like comfort even in 
murky Liverpool; and 
great magnificence is 
there — as well of 
architecture and opulent living as of enterprise and 
action. "Towered cities" and "the busy hum of men," 
however, are soon left behind by the wise traveller in 
England. A time will come for those ; but in his first 
sojourn there he soon discovers the two things that are 
utterly to absorb him — which cannot disappoint — and 

These things 




m 



*^fttx . 



Old house at Bridport. 



which are the fulfilment of all his dreams. 



i THE VOYAGE 21 

are — the rustic loveliness of the land and the charm of 
its always vital and splendid antiquity. The green lanes, 
the thatched cottages, the meadows glorious with wild- 
flowers, the little churches covered with dark-green ivy, 
the Tudor gables festooned with roses, the devious foot- 
paths that wind across wild heaths and long and lone- 
some fields, the narrow, shining rivers, brimful to their 
banks and crossed here and there with gray, moss-grown 
bridges, the stately elms whose low-hanging branches 
droop over a turf of emerald velvet, the gnarled beech- 
trees "that wreathe their old, fantastic roots so high," 
the rooks that caw and circle in the air, the sweet winds 
that blow from fragrant woods, the sheep and the deer 
that rest in shady places, the pretty children who cluster 
round the porches of their cleanly, cosy homes, and peep 
at the wayfarer as he passes, the numerous and often 
brilliant birds that at times fill the air with music, the 
brief, light, pleasant rains that ever and anon refresh 
the landscape — these are some of the everyday joys of 
rural England ; and these are wrapped in a climate that 
makes life one serene ecstasy. Meantime, in rich valleys 
or on verdant slopes, a thousand old castles and monas- 
teries, ruined or half in ruins, allure the pilgrim's gaze, 
inspire his imagination, arouse his memory, and fill his 
mind. The best romance of the past and the best 
reality of the present are his banquet now ; and nothing 
is wanting to the perfection of the feast. I thought 
that life could have but few moments of content in store 
for me like the moment — never to be forgotten! — when, 
in the heart of London, on a perfect June day, I lay 
upon the grass in the old Green Park, and, for the first 
time, looked up to the towers of Westminster Abbey. 



CHAPTER II 



THE BEAUTY OF ENGLAND 




is not strange that Englishmen should 
be — as certainly they are — passionate 
lovers of their country ; for their country 
is, almost beyond parallel, peaceful, gen- 
tle, and beautiful. Even in vast London, 
where practical life asserts itself with such prodigious 
force, the stranger is impressed, in every direction, with 
a sentiment of repose and peace. This sentiment seems 
to proceed in part from the antiquity of the social 
system here established, and in part from the affection- 
ate nature of the English people. Here are finished 
towns, rural regions thoroughly cultivated and exqui- 
sitely adorned ; ancient architecture, crumbling in slow 
decay ; and a soil so rich and pure that even in its idlest 
mood it lights itself up with flowers, just as the face of 
a sleeping child lights itself up with smiles. Here, 
also, are soft and kindly manners, settled principles, 
good laws, wise customs — wise, because rooted in the 
universal attributes of human nature ; and, above all, 
here is the practice of trying to live in a happy condi- 

22 



chap, ii THE BEAUTY OF ENGLAND 23 

tion instead of trying to make a noise about it. Here, 
accordingly, life is soothed and hallowed with the 
comfortable, genial, loving spirit of home. It would, 
doubtless, be easily possible to come into contact here 
with absurd forms and pernicious abuses, to observe 
absurd individuals, and to discover veins of sordid 
selfishness and of evil and sorrow. But the things that 
first and most deeply impress the observer of England 
and English society are their potential, manifold, and 
abundant sources of beauty, refinement, and peace. 
^There are, of course, grumblers. Mention has been 
made of a person who, even in heaven, would complain 
that his cloud was damp and his halo a misfit. We 
cannot have perfection ; but the man who could not be 
happy in England — in so far, at least, as happiness 
depends upon external objects and influences — could 
not reasonably expect to be happy anywhere. 

Summer heat is perceptible for an hour or two each 
day, but it causes no discomfort. Fog has refrained ; 
though it is understood to be lurking in the Irish sea 
and the English channel, and waiting for November, 
when it will drift into town and grime all the new paint 
on the London houses. Meantime, the sky is softly 
blue and full of magnificent bronze clouds ; the air is 
cool, and in the environs of the city is fragrant with the 
scent of new-mown hay ; and the grass and trees in the 
parks — those copious and splendid lungs of London — 
are green, dewy, sweet, and beautiful. '. Persons " to the 
manner born" were lately calling the season "back- 
ward," and they went so far as to grumble at the haw- 
thorne, as being less brilliant than in former seasons. 
But, in fact, to the unfamiliar sense, this tree of odorous 



24 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

coral has been delicious. We have nothing comparable 
with it in northern America, unless, perhaps, it be the 
elder, of our wild woods ; and even that, with all its 
fragrance, lacks equal charm of colour. They use the 
hawthorne, or some kindred shrub, for hedges in this 
country, and hence their fields are seldom disfigured 
with fences. As you ride through the land you see 
miles and miles of meadow traversed by these green 
and blooming hedgerows, which give the country a 
charm quite incommunicable in words. The green of 
the foliage — enriched by an uncommonly humid air 
and burnished by the sun — is in perfection, while the 
flowers bloom in such abundance that the whole realm 
is one glowing pageant. I saw near Oxford, on the 
crest of a hill, a single ray of at least a thousand feet of 
scarlet poppies. Imagine that glorious dash of colour 
in a green landscape lit by the afternoon sun ! Nobody 
could help loving a land that woos him with such 
beauty. 

English flowers are exceptional for substance and 
pomp. The roses, in particular — though some of them, 
it should be said, are of French breeds — surpass all 
others. It may seem an extravagance to say, but it is 
certainly true, that these rich, firm, brilliant flowers af- 
fect you like creatures of flesh and blood. They are, in 
this respect, only to be described as like nothing in the 
world so much as the bright lips and blushing cheeks 
of the handsome English women who walk among them 
and vie with them in health and loveliness. It is easy 
to perceive the source of those elements of warmth and 
sumptuousness that are so conspicuous in the results of 
English taste. It is a land of flowers. Even in the 



THE BEAUTY OF ENGLAND 



25 



busiest parts of London the people decorate their houses 
with them, and set the sombre, fog-grimed fronts ablaze 
with scarlet and gold. These are the prevalent colours — 
radically so, for they have become national '- . 

— and, when placed against the black tint 
with which this climate stains the 
buildings, they have the advan- 




Restoration House, Rochester. 

tage of a vivid contrast that much augments their splen- 
dour. All London wears crape, variegated with a tra- 
cery of white, like lace upon a pall. In some instances 
the effect is splendidly pompous. There cannot be a 
grander artificial object in the world than the front of 



26 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

St. Paul's cathedral, which is especially notable for this 
mysterious blending of light and shade. It is to be 
deplored that a climate which can thus beautify should 
also destroy ; but there can be no doubt that the stones 
of England are steadily defaced by the action of the 
damp atmosphere. Already the delicate carvings on 
the palace of Westminster are beginning to crumble. 
And yet, if one might judge the climate by this glitter- 
ing July, England is a land of sunshine as well as of 
flowers. Light comes before three o'clock in the morn- 
ing, and it lasts, through a dreamy and lovely gloaming, 
till nearly ten o'clock at night. The morning sky is 
usually light blue, dappled with slate-coloured clouds. 
A few large stars are visible then, lingering to outface 
the dawn. Cool winds whisper, and presently they 
rouse the great, sleepy, old elms ; and then the rooks — 
which are the low comedians of the air in this region 
— begin to grumble ; and then the sun leaps above the 
horizon, and we sweep into a day of golden, breezy 
cheerfulness and comfort, the like of which is rarely 
or never known in northern America, between June 
and October. Sometimes the whole twenty-four hours 
have drifted past, as if in a dream of light, and fra- 
grance, and music. In a recent moonlight time there 
was scarce any darkness at all ; and more than once I 
have lain awake all night, within a few miles of Charing 
Cross, listening to a twitter of birds that is like the lapse 
and fall of silver water. It used to be difficult to under- 
stand why the London season should begin in May and 
last through most of the summer ; it is not difficult to 
understand the custom now. 

The elements of discontent and disturbance which are 



THE BEAUTY OF ENGLAND 



27 



visible in English society are found, upon close examina- 
tion, to be merely superficial. Underneath them there 
abides a sturdy, immutable, inborn love of England. 
Those croakings, grumblings, and bickerings do but 
denote the process by which 
the body politic frees itself 
from the headaches and 
fevers that embarrass the 
national health. The Eng- 
lishman and his country are 
one; and when the English- 
man complains against his 
country it is not because he 
believes that either there is 
or can be a better country 
elsewhere, but because his 
instinct of justice and order 
makes him crave perfection 
in his own. Institutions and 
principles are, with him, by 
nature, paramount to indi- 
viduals ; and individuals only 
possess importance — and that conditional on abiding 
rectitude — who are their representatives. Everything 
is done in England to promote the permanence and 
beauty of the home; and the permanence and beauty 
of the home, by a natural reaction, augment in the 
English people solidity of character and peace of life. 
They do not dwell in a perpetual fret and fume as 
to the acts, thoughts, and words of other nations : for 
the English there is absolutely no public opinion outside 
of their own land : they do not live for the sake of work- 




Charing Cross. 



28 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap, ii 

ing, but they work for the sake of living; and, as the 
necessary preparations for living have long since been 
completed, their country is at rest. This is the secret of 
England's first, and continuous, and last, and all-pervad- 
ing charm and power for the stranger — the charm and 
power to soothe. 

The efficacy of endeavouring to make a country a 
united, comfortable, and beautiful home for all its 
inhabitants, — binding every heart to the land by the 
same tie that binds every heart to the fireside, — is 
something well worthy to be considered, equally by the 
practical statesman and the contemplative observer. 
That way, assuredly, lie the welfare of the human race 
and all the tranquillity that human nature — warped as 
it is by evil — will ever permit to this world. This 
endeavour has, through long ages, been steadily pursued 
in England, and one of its results — which is also one 
of its indications — is the vast accumulation of what 
may be called home treasures in the city of London. 
The mere enumeration of them would fill large volumes. 
The description of them could not be completed in a 
lifetime. It was this copiousness of historic wealth and 
poetic association, combined with the flavour of char- 
acter and the sentiment of monastic repose, that bound 
Dr. Johnson to Fleet Street and made Charles Lamb 
such an inveterate lover of the town. Except it be to 
correct a possible insular narrowness there can be no 
need that the Londoner should travel. Glorious sights, 
indeed, await him, if he journeys no further away than 
Paris ; but, aside from ostentation, luxury, gaiety, and 
excitement, Paris will give him nothing that he may not 
find at home. The great cathedral of Notre Dame will 



30 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

awe him ; but not more than his own Westminster 
Abbey. The grandeur and beauty of the Madeleine 
will enchant him ; but not more than the massive 
solemnity and stupendous magnificence of St. Paul's. 
The embankments of the Seine will satisfy his taste 
with their symmetrical solidity ; but he will not deem 
them superior in any respect to the embankments of the 
Thames. The Pantheon, the Hotel des Invalides, the 
Luxembourg, the Louvre, the Tribunal of Commerce, 
the Opera-House, — all these will dazzle and delight 
his eyes, arousing his remembrances of history and 
firing his imagination of great events and persons ; but 
all these will fail to displace in his esteem the grand 
Palace of Westminster, so stately in its simplicity, so 
strong in its perfect grace ! He will ride through the 
exquisite Park of Monceau, — one of the loveliest spots 
in Paris, — and onward to the Bois de Boulogne, with 
its sumptuous pomp of foliage, its romantic green vistas, 
its many winding avenues, its hillside hermitage, its 
cascades, and its affluent lakes whereon the white 
swans beat the water with their joyous wings ; but still 
his soul will turn, with unshaken love and loyal prefer- 
ence to the sweetly sylvan solitude of the gardens of 
Kensington and Kew. He will marvel in the museums 
of the Louvre, the Luxembourg, and Cluny ; and prob- 
ably he will concede that of paintings, whether ancient 
or modern, the French display is larger and finer than 
the English ; but he will vaunt the British Museum as 
peerless throughout the world, and he will still prize 
his National Gallery, with its originals of Hogarth, 
Reynolds, Gainsborough, and Turner, its spirited, ten- 
der, and dreamy Murillos, and its dusky glories of 



ii THE BEAUTY OF ENGLAND 31 

Rembrandt. He will admire, at the Theatre Francais, 
the photographic perfection of French acting ; but he 
will be apt to reflect that English dramatic art, if it 
sometimes lacks finish, often has the effect of nature ; 
and he will certainly perceive that the playhouse itself 
is not superior to either Her Majesty's Theatre or 
Covent Garden. He will luxuriate in the Champs 
Elysees, in the superb Boulevards, in the glittering 
pageant of precious jewels that blazes in the Rue de la 
Paix and the Palais Royal, and in that gorgeous pano- 
rama of shop-windows for which the French capital is 
unrivalled and famous ; and he will not deny that, as 
to brilliancy of aspect, Paris is prodigious and une- 
qualled — the most radiant of cities — the sapphire in 
the crown of Solomon. But, when all is seen, either 
that Louis the Fourteenth created or Buonaparte 
pillaged, — when he has taken his last walk in the 
gardens of the Tuileries, and mused, at the foot of the 
statue of Caesar, on that Titanic strife of monarchy and 
democracy of which France has seemed destined to be 
the perpetual theatre, — sated with the glitter of showy 
opulence and tired with the whirl of frivolous life he 
will gladly and gratefully turn again to his sombre, 
mysterious, thoughtful, restful old London ; and, like 
the Syrian captain, though in the better spirit of truth 
and right, declare that Abana and Pharpar, rivers of 
Damascus, are better than all the waters of Israel. 




CHAPTER III 



GREAT HISTORIC PLACES 




HERE is so much to be seen in London 
that the pilgrim scarcely knows where to 
choose and certainly is perplexed by what 
Dr. Johnson called "the multiplicity of 
agreeable consciousness." One spot to 
which I have many times been drawn, and which the 
mention of Dr. Johnson instantly calls to mind, is the 
stately and solemn place in Westminster Abbey where 
that great man's ashes are buried. Side by side, under 
the pavement of the Abbey, within a few feet of earth, 
sleep Johnson, Garrick, Sheridan, Henderson, Dickens, 
Cumberland, and Handel. Garrick's wife is buried in 
the same grave with her husband. Close by, some 
brass letters on a little slab in the stone floor mark the 
last resting-place of Thomas Campbell. Not far off is 
the body of Macaulay ; while many a stroller through 
the nave treads upon the gravestone of that astonishing 
old man Thomas Parr, who lived in the reigns of nine 
princes (148 3-1635), and reached the great age of 152. 
All parts of Westminster Abbey impress the reverential 

32 



chap, in GREAT HISTORIC PLACES 33 

mind. It is an experience very strange and full of awe 
suddenly to find your steps upon the sepulchres of such 
illustrious men as Burke, Pitt, Fox, and Grattan ; and 
you come, with a thrill of more than surprise, upon 
such still fresh antiquity as the grave of Anne Neville, 
the daughter of Warwick and queen of Richard the 
Third. But no single spot in the great cathedral can 
so enthral the imagination as that strip of storied stone 
beneath which Garrick, Johnson, Sheridan, Henderson, 
Cumberland, Dickens, Macaulay, and Handel sleep, 
side by side. This writer, when lately he visited the 
Abbey, found a chair upon the grave of Johnson, and 
sat down there to rest and muse. The letters on the 
stone are fast wearing away ; but the memory of that 
sturdy champion of thought can never perish, as long 
as the votaries of literature love their art and honour 
the valiant genius that battled — through hunger, toil, 
and contumely — for its dignity and renown. It was 
a tender and right feeling that prompted the burial of 
Johnson close beside Garrick. They set out together 
to seek their fortune in the great city. They went 
through privation and trial hand in hand. Each found 
glory in a different way ; and, although parted after- 
ward by the currents of fame and wealth, they were 
never sundered in affection. It was fit they should at 
last find their rest together, under the most glorious 
roof that greets the skies of England. 

Fortune gave me a good first day at the Tower of 
London. The sky lowered. The air was very cold. 
The wind blew with angry gusts. The rain fell, now 
and then, in a chill drizzle. The river was dark and 
sullen. If the spirits of the dead come back to haunt 



34 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

any place they surely come back to haunt that one ; 
and this was a day for their presence. One dark ghost 
seemed near, at every step — the ominous shade of the 
lonely Duke of Gloster. The little room in which the 
princes are said to have been murdered, by his com- 
mand, was shown, and the oratory where king Henry 
the Sixth is supposed to have met a violent death, and 
the council chamber, in which Richard — after listening, 
in an ambush behind the arras — denounced the 
wretched Hastings. The latter place is now used as an 
armoury ; but the same ceiling covers it that echoed the 
bitter invective of Gloster and the rude clamour of his 
soldiers, when their frightened victim was plucked forth 
and dragged downstairs, to be beheaded on " a timber- 
log " in the courtyard. The Tower is a place for such 
deeds, and you almost wonder that they do not happen 
still, in its gloomy chambers. The room in which the 
princes were killed (if killed indeed they were) is par- 
ticularly grisly in aspect. It is an inner room, small 
and dark. A barred window in one of its walls fronts 
a window on the other side of the passage by which 
you approach it. This is but a few feet from the floor, 
and perhaps the murderers paused to look through it as 
they went to their hellish work upon the children of 
king Edward. The entrance was indicated to a secret 
passage by which this apartment could be approached 
from the foot of the Tower. In one gloomy stone 
chamber the crown jewels are exhibited, in a large 
glass case. One of the royal relics is a crown of velvet 
and gold that was made for poor Anne Boleyn. You 
may pass across the courtyard and pause on the spot 
where that miserable woman was beheaded, and you 



in GREAT HISTORIC PLACES 35 

may walk thence over the ground that her last trem- 
bling footsteps traversed, to the round tower in which, 
at the close, she lived. Her grave is in the chancel of 
the little antique church, close by. I saw the cell of 
Raleigh, and that direful chamber which is scrawled all 
over with the names and emblems of prisoners who 
therein suffered confinement and lingering agony, 
nearly always ending in death ; but I saw no sadder 
place than Anne Boleyn's tower. It seemed in the 
strangest way eloquent of mute suffering. It seemed 
to exhale grief and to plead for love and pity. Yet — 
what woman ever had greater love than was lavished 
on her ? And what woman ever trampled more royally 
and recklessly upon human hearts ? 

The Tower of London is degraded by being put to 
commonplace uses and by being exhibited in a common- 
place manner. They use the famous White Tower now 
as a store-house for arms, and it contains about one 
hundred thousand guns, besides a vast collection of old 
armour and weapons. The arrangement of the latter 
was made by J. R. Planche, the dramatic author, — 
famous as an antiquarian and a herald. [That learned, 
able, brilliant, and honoured gentleman died, May 29, 
1880, aged 84.] Under his tasteful direction the effigies 
and gear of chivalry are displayed in such a way that 
the observer may trace the changes that war fashions 
have undergone, through the reigns of successive 
sovereigns of England, from the earliest period until 
now. A suit of mail worn by Henry the Eighth is 
shown, and also a suit worn by Charles the First! The 
suggestiveness of both figures is remarkable. In a 
room on the second floor of the White Tower they keep 



36 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

many gorgeous oriental weapons, and they show the 
cloak in which General Wolfe died, on the Plains of 
Abraham. It is a gray garment, to which the active 
moth has given a share of his assiduous attention. The 
most impressive objects to be seen there, however, are 
the block and axe that were used in beheading the 
Scotch lords, Kilmarnock, Balmerino, and Lovat, after 
the defeat of the pretender, in 1746. The block is of 
ash, and there are big and cruel dents upon it, showing 
that it was made for use rather than ornament. It is 
harmless enough now, and this writer was allowed to 
place his head uj:>on it, in the manner prescribed for the 
victims of decapitation. The door of Raleigh's bed- 
room is opposite to these baleful relics, and it is said 
that his History of the World was written in the room in 
which these implements are now such conspicuous 
objects of gloom. 1 The place is gloomy and cheerless 
beyond expression, and great must have been the 
fortitude of the man who bore, in that grim solitude, a 
captivity of thirteen years — not failing to improve it 
by producing a book so excellent for quaintness, philos- 
ophy, and eloquence. A " beef-eater," arrayed in a 
dark tunic, trousers trimmed with red, and a black 
velvet hat adorned with bows of blue and red ribbon, 
precedes each group of visitors, and drops information • 
and the letter h, from point to point. The centre of 
what was once the Tower green is marked with a brass 
plate, naming Anne Boleyn and giving the date when 
she was there beheaded. They found her body in an 

1 Many of these relics have since been disposed in a different way. — 
Raleigh was incarcerated in various parts of the Tower, in the course of his 
several imprisonments. 









A BEEFEATER. 



GREAT HISTORIC PLACES 



37 



elm-wood box, made to hold arrows, and it now rests, 
with the ashes of other noble sufferers, under the stones 
of the church of St. Peter, about fifty feet from the 
place of execution. The ghost of Anne Boleyn is 
said to haunt that part of the Tower where she lived, 
and it is likewise whispered that the spectre of Lady 
Jane Grey was seen, not long ago, on the anniversary 
of the day of her execution [Obiit February 12, 1554], 
to glide out upon a balcony adjacent to the room in 
which she lodged during nearly eight months, at the 
last of her wasted, unfortunate, but gentle and noble 
life. [That room was in the house of Thomas Brydges, 
brother and deputy of Sir John Brydges, Lieutenant of 
the Tower, and its windows command an unobstructed 
view of the Tower green, which was the place of the 
block.] It could serve no good purpose to relate the 
particulars of those visitations; but nobody doubts them 
— while he is in the Tower. It is a place of mystery 
and horror, notwithstanding all that the practical spirit 
of to-day has done to make it trivial and to cheapen its 
grim glories by association with the commonplace. 




CHAPTER IV 



RAMBLES IN LONDON 




LL old cities get rich in association, as 
a matter of course and whether they will 
or no ; but London, by reason of its great 
extent, as well as its great antiquity, is 
richer in association than any modern 
place on earth. The stranger scarcely takes a step 
without encountering a new object of interest. The 
walk along the Strand and Fleet Street, in particular, 
is continually on storied ground. Old Temple Bar still 
stands (July 1877), though "tottering to its fall," and 
marks the junction of the two streets. The statues of 
Charles the First and Charles the Second on its western 
front would be remarkable anywhere, as characteristic 
portraits. You stand beside that arch and quite forget 
the passing throng, and take no heed of the tumult 
around, as you think of Johnson and Boswell leaning 
against the Bar after midnight in the far-off times and 
waking the echoes of the Temple Garden with their 
frolicsome laughter. The Bar is carefully propped 
now, and they will nurse its age as long as they can ; 

38 



CHAP. IV 



RAMBLES IN LONDON 



39 



but it is an obstruction to travel — and it must dis- 
appear. (It was removed in the summer of 1878.) 
They will probably set it up, newly built, in another 
place. They have 
left untouched a lit- 
tle piece of the origi- 
nal scaffolding built 
around St. Paul's ; 
and that fragment 
of decaying wood 
may still be seen, 
high upon the side 
of the cathedral. 
The Rainbow, the 
Mitre, the Cheshire 
Cheese, Dolly's 
Chop -House, the 
Cock, and the 
Round Table — tav- 
erns or public- 
houses that were 
frequented by the 
old wits — are still 
extant (1877). The 
Cheshire Cheese is 
scarcely changed 
from what it was 
when Johnson, Gold- 
smith, and their com- 
rades ate beefsteak pie and drank porter there, and the 
Doctor " tossed and gored several persons," as it was 
his cheerful custom to do. The benches in that room 




/ . 

Approach to Cheshire Cheese. 



40 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap, iv 

are narrow, incommodious, penitential ; mere ledges 
of well-worn wood, on which the visitor sits bolt up- 
right, in difficult perpendicular ; but there is, probably, 
nothing on earth that would induce the owner to alter 
them — and he is right. The conservative principle in 
the English mind, if it has saved some trash, has saved 
more treasure. At the foot of Buckingham Street, in 
the Strand, — where was situated an estate of George 
Villiers, first Duke of Buckingham, assassinated in 
1628, whose tomb may be seen in the chapel of Henry 
the Seventh in Westminster Abbey, — still stands the 
slowly crumbling ruin of the old Water Gate, so often 
mentioned as the place where accused traitors were 
embarked for the Tower. The river, in former times, 
flowed up to that gate, but the land along the margin 
of the Thames has been redeemed, and the magnificent 
Victoria and Albert embankments now border the river 
for a long distance on both sides. The Water Gate, in 
fact, stands in a little park on the north bank of the 
Thames. Not far away is the Adelphi Terrace, where 
Garrick lived and died (Obiit January 20, 1779, aged 
63), and where, on October 1, 1822, his widow expired, 
aged 98. The house of Garrick is let in " chambers " 
now. If you walk up the Strand towards Charing Cross 
you presently come near to the Church of St. Martin-in- 
the-Fields, which is one of the works of James Gibbs, a 
pupil of Sir Christopher Wren, and entirely worthy of 
the master's hand. The fogs have stained that building 
with such a deft touch as shows the caprice of nature to 
be often better than the best design of art. Nell Gwyn's 
name is connected with St. Martin. Her funeral oc- 
curred in that church, and was pompous, and no less a 




St. Cleme7tt Danes. — The Strand. 



42 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap, iv 

person than Tenison (afterwards Archbishop of Canter- 
bury) preached the funeral sermon. 1 That prelate's 
dust reposes in Lambeth church, which can be seen, 
across the river, from this part of Westminster. If you 
walk down the Strand, through Temple Bar, you pres- 
ently reach the Temple ; and there is no place in Lon- 
don where the past and the present are so strangely 
confronted as they are here. The venerable church, so 
quaint with its cone-pointed turrets, was sleeping in the 
sunshine when first I saw it ; sparrows were twittering 
around its spires and gliding in and out of the crevices 
in its ancient walls ; while from within a strain of organ 
music, low and sweet, trembled forth, till the air became 
a benediction and every common thought and feeling 
was purified away from mind and heart. The grave 
of Goldsmith is close to the pathway that skirts this 
church, on a terrace raised above the foundation of the 
building and above the little graveyard of the Templars 
that nestles at its base. As I stood beside the resting- 
place of that sweet poet it was impossible not to feel 
both grieved and glad : grieved at the thought of all he 
suffered, and of all that the poetic nature must always 
suffer before it will utter its immortal music for man- 
kind : glad that his gentle spirit found rest at last, and 
that time has given him the crown he would most have 
prized — the affection of true hearts. A gray stone, 
coffin-shaped and marked with a cross, — after the fash- 
ion of the contiguous tombs of the Templars, — is im- 
posed upon his grave. One surface bears the inscrip- 

1 This was made the occasion of a complaint against him, to Queen 
Mary, who gently expressed her unshaken confidence in his goodness and 
truth. 




>& It. i J< . . 2 - e J J :• • ; •• . 



L 

J- 1 \= 

r 7 -1 






■** 



Temple Church. 



44 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

tion, " Here lies Oliver Goldsmith " ; the other presents 
the dates of his birth and death. (Born Nov. 10, 1728 ; 
died April 4, 1774.) I tried to call up the scene of his 
burial, when, around the open grave, on that tearful 
April evening, Johnson, Burke, Reynolds, Beauclerk, 
Boswell, Davies, Kelly, Palmer, and the rest of that 
broken circle, may have gathered to witness 

" The duties by the lawn-robed prelate paid, 
And the last rites that dust to dust conveyed. 11 

No place could be less romantic than Southwark is 
now ; but there are few places in England that possess 
a greater charm for the literary pilgrim. Shakespeare 
lived there, and it was there that he wrote for a theatre 
and made a fortune. Old London Bridge spanned the 
Thames at this point, in those days, and was the only 
road to the Surrey side of the river. The theatre stood 
near the end of the bridge and was thus easy of access 
to the wits and beaux of London. No trace of it now 
remains ; but a public-house called the Globe, which 
was its name, is standing near, and the old church of 
St. Saviour — into which Shakespeare must often have 
entered — still braves the storm and still resists the 
encroachments of time and change. In Shakespeare's 
day there were houses on each side of London Bridge ; 
and as he walked on the bank of the Thames he could 
look across to the Tower, and to Baynard Castle, which 
had been the residence of Richard, Duke of Gloster, 
and could see, uplifted high in air, the spire of old St. 
Paul's. The borough of Southwark was then but thinly 
peopled. Many of its houses, as may be seen in an 
old picture of the city, were surrounded by fields or 



iv RAMBLES IN LONDON 45 

gardens ; and life to its inhabitants must have been 
comparatively rural. Now it is packed with buildings, 
gridironed with railways, crowded with people, and to 
the last degree resonant and feverish with action and 
effort. Life swarms, traffic bustles, and travel thunders 
all round the cradle of the British drama. The old 
church of St. Saviour alone preserves the sacred 
memory of the past. I made a pilgrimage to that 
shrine, with Arthur Sketchley (George Rose), one of 
the kindliest humourists in England. (Obiit November 
13, 1882.) We embarked at Westminster Bridge and 
landed close by the church in Southwark, and we were 
so fortunate as to get permission to enter it without a 
guide. The oldest part of it is the Lady chapel — 
which, in English cathedrals, is almost invariably placed 
behind the choir. Through this we strolled, alone and 
in silence. Every footstep there falls upon a grave. 
The pavement is one mass of gravestones ; and through 
the tall, stained windows of the chapel a solemn light 
pours in upon the sculptured names of men and women 
who have long been dust. In one corner is an ancient 
stone coffin — a relic of the Roman days of Britain. 
This is the place in which Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of 
Winchester, in the days of cruel Queen Mary, held his 
ecclesiastical court and doomed many a dissentient 
devotee to the rack and the fagot. Here was con- 
demned John Rogers, — afterwards burnt at the stake, 
in Smithfield. Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth may 
often have entered this chapel. But it is in the choir 
that the pilgrim pauses with most of reverence ; for 
there, not far from the altar, he stands at the graves of 
Edmund Shakespeare, John Fletcher, and Philip Mas- 




Gower's Monument. 



chap, iv RAMBLES IN LONDON 47 

singer. They apparently rest almost side by side, and 
only their names and the dates of their death are cut 
in the tablets that mark their sepulchres. Edmund 
Shakespeare, the younger brother of William, was an 
actor in his company, and died in 1607, aged twenty- 
seven. The great poet must have stood at that grave, 
and suffered and wept there ; and somehow the lover 
of Shakespeare comes very near to the heart of the 
master when he stands in that place. Massinger was 
buried there, March 18, 1638, — the parish register 
recording him as "a stranger." Fletcher — of the 
Beaumont and Fletcher alliance — was buried there, in 
1625 : Beaumont's grave is in the Abbey. The dust of 
Henslowe the manager also rests beneath the pavement 
of St. Saviour's. Bishop Gardiner was buried there, 
with pompous ceremonial, in 1555, — but subsequently 
his remains were removed to the cathedral at Win- 
chester. The great prelate Lancelot Andrews, com- 
memorated by Milton, found his grave there, in 1626. 
The royal poet King James the First, of Scotland, was 
married there, in 1423, to Jane, daughter of the Earl of 
Somerset and niece of Cardinal Beaufort. In the south 
transept of the church is the tomb of John Gower, the 
old poet — whose effigy, carved and painted, reclines 
upon it and is not attractive. A formal, severe aspect 
he must have had, if he resembled that image. The 
tomb has been moved from the spot where it first stood 
— a proceeding made necessary by a fire that destroyed 
part of the old church. It is said that Gower caused 
the tomb to be erected during his lifetime, so that it 
might be in readiness to receive his bones. The bones 
are lost, but the memorial remains — sacred to the 



48 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

memory of the father of English song. This tomb was 
restored by the Duke of Sutherland, in 1832. It is 
enclosed by a little grill made of iron spears, painted 
brown and gilded at their points. I went into the new 
part of the church, and, alone, knelt in one of the 




Andrews Monument. 

pews and long remained there, overcome with thoughts 
of the past and of the transient, momentary nature of 
this our earthly life and the shadows that we pursue. 

One object of merriment attracts a passing glance in 
that old church. There is a tomb in a corner of it 
that commemorates Dr. Lockyer, a maker of patent 



RAMBLES IN LONDON 



49 



physic, in the time of Charles the Second. This elabo- 
rate structure presents an effigy of the doctor, together 
with a sounding epitaph which declares that 

" His virtues and his pills are so well known 
That envy can't confine them under stone." 

Shakespeare once lived in Clink Street, in the bor- 
ough of Southwark. Goldsmith practised medicine 
there. Chaucer came there, with his Canterbury Pil- 
grims, and lodged at the Tabard inn, which has dis- 
appeared. It must have been a romantic region in 
the old times. It is anything but romantic now. 





CHAPTER V 



A VISIT TO WINDSOR 




F the beauty of England were only super- 
ficial it would produce only a superficial 
effect. It would cause a passing pleasure 
and would be forgotten. It certainly 
would not — as now in fact it does — in- 
spire a deep, joyous, serene and grateful contentment, 
and linger in the mind, a gracious and beneficent re- 
membrance. The conquering and lasting potency of it 
resides not alone in loveliness of expression but in love- 
liness of character. Having first greatly blessed the 
British islands with the natural advantages of position, 
climate, soil, and products, nature has wrought their de- 
velopment and adornment as a necessary consequence 
of the spirit of their inhabitants. The picturesque vari- 
ety and pastoral repose of the English landscape spring, 
in a considerable measure, from the imaginative taste 
and the affectionate gentleness of the English people. 
The state of the country, like its social constitution, 
flows from principles within, which are constantly sug- 
gested, and it steadily comforts and nourishes the mind 

5 1 



feik. 




chap, v A VISIT TO WINDSOR 53 

with a sense of kindly feeling, moral rectitude, solidity, 
and permanence. Thus in the peculiar beauty of Eng- 
land the ideal is made the actual — is expressed in things 
more than in words, and in things by which words are 
transcended. Milton's " L' Allegro," fine as it is, is not so 
fine as the scenery — the crystallised, embodied poetry 
— out of which it arose. All the delicious rural verse 
that has been written in England is only the excess and 
superflux of her own poetic opulence : it has rippled from 
the hearts of her poets just as the fragrance floats away 
from her hawthorn hedges. At every step of his prog- 
ress the pilgrim through English scenes is impressed with 
this sovereign excellence of the accomplished fact, as con- 
trasted with any words that can be said in its celebration. 
Among representative scenes that are eloquent with 
this instructive meaning, — scenes easily and pleasurably 
accessible to the traveller in what Dickens expressively 
called " the green, English summer weather," — is the 
region of Windsor. The chief features of it have often 
been described ; the charm that it exercises can only be 
suggested. To see Windsor, moreover, is to compre- 
hend as at a glance the old feudal system, and to feel 
in a profound and special way the pomp of English 
character and history. More than this : it is to rise to the 
ennobling serenity that always accompanies broad, retro- 
spective contemplation of the current of human affairs. 
In this quaint, decorous town — nestled at the base of 
that mighty and magnificent castle which has been the 
home of princes for more than five hundred years — 
the imaginative mind wanders over vast tracts of the 
past and beholds as in a mirror the pageants of chivalry, 
the coronations of kings, the strife of sects, the battles 



54 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap, v 

of armies, the schemes of statesmen, the decay of tran- 
sient systems, the growth of a rational civilisation, and 
the everlasting march of thought. Every prospect of 
the region intensifies this sentiment of contemplative 
grandeur. As you look from the castle walls your gaze 
takes in miles and miles of blooming country, sprinkled 
over with little hamlets, wherein the utmost stateliness 
of learning and rank is gracefully commingled with all 
that is lovely and soothing in rural life. Not far away 
rise the " antique towers " of Eton — 

" Where grateful science still adores 
Her Henry's holy shade. 1 ' 

It was in Windsor Castle that her Henry was born ; and 
there he often held his court ; and it is in St. George's 
chapel that his ashes repose. In the dim distance 
stands the church of Stoke-Pogis, about which Gray 
used to wander, 

" Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade." 

You recognise now a deeper significance than ever be- 
fore in the " solemn stillness " of the incomparable 
Elegy. The luminous twilight mood of that immortal 
poem — its pensive reverie and solemn passion — is in- 
herent in the scene ; and you feel that it was there, and 
there only, that the genius of its exceptional author — 
austerely gentle and severely pure, and thus in perfect 
harmony with its surroundings — could have been moved 
to that sublime strain of inspiration and eloquence. 
Near at hand, in the midst of your reverie, the mellow 
organ sounds from the chapel of St. George, where, 
under " fretted vault" and over " long-drawn aisle," 
depend the ghostly, mouldering banners of ancient 



56 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap, v 

knights — as still as the bones of the dead-and-gone 
monarchs that crumble in the crypt below. In this 
church are many of the old kings and nobles of Eng- 
land. The handsome and gallant Edward the Fourth 
here found his grave ; and near it is that of the accom- 
plished Hastings- — his faithful friend, to the last and 
after. Here lies the dust of the stalwart, impetuous, 
and savage Henry the Eighth, and here, at midnight, 
by the light of torches, they laid beneath the pavement 
the mangled body of Charles the First. As you stand 
on Windsor ramparts, pondering thus upon the storied 
past and the evanescence of " all that beauty, all that 
wealth e'er gave," your eyes rest dreamily on green 
fields far below, through which, under tall elms, the 
brimming and sparkling river flows on without a sound, 
and in which a few figures, dwarfed by distance, flit here 
and there, in seeming aimless idleness ; while, warned 
homeward by impending sunset, the chattering birds 
circle and float around the lofty towers of the castle ; 
and delicate perfumes of seringa and jasmine are wafted 
up from dusky, unknown depths at the base of its ivied 
steep. At such an hour I stood on those ramparts and 
saw the shy villages and rich meadows of fertile Berk- 
shire, all red and golden with sunset light ; and at such 
an hour I stood in the lonely cloisters of St. George's 
chapel, and heard the distant organ sob, and saw the 
sunlight fade up the gray walls, and felt and knew 
the sanctity of silence. Age and death have made this 
church illustrious ; but the spot itself has its own innate 
charm of mystical repose. 

" No use of lanterns ; and in one place lay 
Feathers and dust to-day and yesterday." 







Windsor Forest and Park. 



58 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

The drive from the front of Windsor Castle is through 
a broad and stately avenue, three miles in length, straight 
as an arrow and level as a standing pool ; and this white 
highway through the green and fragrant sod is sumptu- 
ously embowered, from end to end, with double rows of 
magnificent elms and oaks. The Windsor avenue, 
like the splendid chestnut grove at Bushey Park, long 
famous among the pageants of rural England, has often 
been described. It is after leaving this that the rambler 
comes upon the rarer beauties of Windsor Park and 
Forest. From the far end of the avenue — where, in 
a superb position, the equestrian statue of King George 
the Third rises on its massive pedestal of natural rock, 

— the road winds away, through shaded dell and ver- 
dant glade, past great gnarled beeches and under boughs 
of elm, and yew, and oak, till its silver thread is lost in 
the distant woods. At intervals a sinuous pathway 
strays off to some secluded lodge, half hidden in foliage 

— the property of the Crown, and the rustic residence 
of a scion of the royal race. In one of those retreats 
dwelt poor old George the Third, in the days of his 
mental darkness ; and the memory of the agonising 
king seems still to cast a shadow on the mysterious and 
melancholy house. They show you, under glass, in one 
of the lodge gardens, an enormous grapevine, owned 
by the Queen — a vine which, from its single stalwart 
trunk, spreads its teeming branches, laterally, more 
than a hundred feet in each direction. So come use 
and thrift, hand in hand with romance ! Many an aged 
oak is passed, in your progress, round which, " at still 
midnight," Heme the Hunter might yet take his ghostly 
prowl, shaking his chain " in a most hideous and dread- 



A VISIT TO WINDSOR 



59 



ful manner." The wreck of the veritable Heme's Oak, 
it is said, was rooted out, together with other ancient 
and decayed trees, in the time of George the Third, 
and in somewhat too literal fulfilment of his Majesty's 




The Curfew Tower. 

misinterpreted command. This great park is fourteen 
miles in circumference and contains nearly four thou- 
sand acres, and many of the youngest trees that adorn 
it are more than one hundred and fifty years old. Far 
in its heart you stroll by Virginia Water — an artificial 
lake, but faultless in its gentle beauty — and perceive 



60 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

it so deep and so breezy that a full-rigged ship-of-war, 
with armament, can navigate its wind-swept, curling 
billows. This lake was made by that sanguinary Duke 
of Cumberland who led the English forces at Culloden. 
In the dim groves that fringe its margin are many nests 
wherein pheasants are bred, to fall by the royal shot and 
to supply the royal table : those you may contemplate 
but not approach. At a point in your walk, sequestered 
and lonely, they have set up and skilfully disposed the 
fragments of a genuine ruined temple, brought from the 
remote East — relic perchance of " Tadmor's marble 
waste," and certainly a most solemn memorial of the 
morning twilight of time. Broken arch, storm-stained 
pillar, and shattered column are here shrouded with 
moss and ivy; and should you chance to see them as the 
evening shadows deepen and the evening wind sighs 
mournfully in the grass your fancy will not fail to 
drink in the perfect illusion that one of the stateliest 
structures of antiquity has slowly crumbled where now 
its fragments remain. 

" Quaint " is a descriptive epithet that has been 
much abused, but it may, with absolute propriety, be 
applied to Windsor. The devious little streets there 
visible, and the carved and timber-crossed buildings, 
often of great age, are uncommonly rich in the expres- 
siveness of imaginative character. The emotions and 
the fancy, equally with the sense of necessity and the in- 
stinct of use, have exercised their influence and uttered 
their spirit in the shaping and adornment of the town. 
While it constantly feeds the eye — with that pleasing 
irregularity of lines and forms which is so delicious and 
refreshing — it quite as constantly nurtures the sense 



A VISIT TO WINDSOR 



61 



of romance that ought to play so large a part in our 
lives, redeeming us from the tyranny of the common- 
place and intensifying all the high feelings and noble 
aspirations that are possible to human nature. England 
contains many places like Windsor ; some that blend 
in even richer amplitude the elements of quaintness, 
loveliness, and magnificence. The meaning of them 
all is the same: that romance, beauty, and gentleness 
are forever vital ; that their forces are within our souls, 
and ready and eager to find their way into our thoughts, 
actions, and circumstances, and to brighten for every 
one of us the face of every day ; that they ought neither 
to be relegated to the distant and the past nor kept for 
our books and day-dreams alone; but — in a calmer and 
higher mood than is usual in this age of universal medi- 
ocrity, critical scepticism, and miscellaneous tumult — 
should be permitted to flow forth into our architecture, 
adornments, and customs, to hallow and preserve our 
antiquities, to soften our manners, to give us tranquillity, 
patience, and tolerance, to make our country loveable 
for our own hearts, and so to enable us to bequeath it, 
sure of love and reverence, to succeeding ages. 




CHAPTER VI 



THE PALACE OF WESTMINSTER 




HE American who, having been a careful 
and interested reader of English history, 
visits London for the first time, half expects 
to find the ancient city in a state of mild 
decay ; and consequently he is a little 
startled at first, upon realising that the present is quite 
as vital as ever the past was, and that London antiquity 
is, in fact, swathed in the robes of everyday action and 
very much alive. When, for example, you enter West- 
minster Hall — "the great hall of William Rufus " — 
you are beneath one of the most glorious canopies in 
the world — one that was built by Richard the Second, 
whose grave, chosen by himself, is in the Abbey, just 
across the street from where you stand. But this old 
hall is now only a vestibule to the palace of Westmin- 
ster. The Lords and the Commons of England, on their 
way to the Houses of Parliament, pass every day over 
the spot on which Charles the First was tried and con- 
demned, and on which occurred the trial of Warren 

glorious though 



Hastings. 



It is a mere thoroughfare 
62 




vlpfc 











64 



SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 



m&t 



M 



it be, alike in structure and historic renown. 
The Palace Yard, near by, was the scene of 
the execution of Sir Walter Raleigh. In 
Bishopsgate Street stands Crosby House ; 
the same to which, in Shakespeare's tragedy, 
the Duke of Gloster requests the retirement 
of Lady Anne. It is a restaurant now, and 
you may dine in the veritable throne-room of 
Richard the Third. The house of Cardinal 
Wolsey in Fleet Street is now a shop. 
Milton once lived in Golden Lane, and 
Golden Lane was a sweet and quiet spot. 
It is a dingy and dismal street now, and 
the visitor is glad to get out of it. To-day 
makes use of yesterday, all the world over. 
It is not in London, certainly, that you find 
anything — except old churches — mouldering 
in silence, solitude, and neglect. 

Those who see every day during the Par- 
liamentary session the mace that is borne 
through the lobby of the House of Com- 
mons, although they are obliged, on every 
occasion, to uncover as it passes, do not, 
probably, view that symbol with much inter- 
est. Yet it is the same mace that Oliver 
Cromwell insulted, 1 when he dissolved the 
Parliament and cried out, " Take away that 



1 An error. The House of Commons has had three maces. 
The first one disappeared after the judicial slaughter of 
Charles the Eirst. The Cromwell mace was carried to the 
island of Jamaica, and is there preserved in a museum at 
Kingston. The third is the one now in use. 



The Mace. 



vi THE PALACE OF WESTMINSTER 65 

bauble ! " I saw it one day, on its passage to the table 
of the Commons, and was glad to remove the hat of 
respect to what it signifies — the power and majesty 
of the free people of England. The Speaker of the 
House was walking behind it, very grand in his wig 
and gown, and the members trooped in at his heels to 
secure their places by being present at the opening 
prayer. A little later I was provided with a seat, in 
a dim corner, in that august assemblage of British sena- 
tors, and could observe at ease their management of the 
public business. The Speaker was on his throne ; the 
mace was on its table; the hats of the Commons were on 
their heads ; and over this singular, animated, impressive 
scene the waning light of a summer afternoon poured 
softly down, through the high, stained, and pictured 
windows of one of the most symmetrical halls in the 
world. It did not happen to be a day of excitement. 
The Irish members had not then begun to impede the 
transaction of business, for the sake of drawing atten- 
tion to the everlasting wrongs of Ireland. Yet it was a 
lively day. Curiosity on the part of the Opposition and 
a respectful incertitude on the part of Her Majesty's 
ministers were the prevailing conditions. I had never 
before heard so many questions asked — outside of the 
French grammar — and asked to so little purpose. 
Everybody wanted to know, and nobody wanted to tell. 
Each inquirer took off his hat when he rose to ask, and 
put it on again when he sat down to be answered. 
Each governmental sphinx bared his brow when he 
emerged to divulge, and covered it again when he 
subsided without divulging. The superficial respect of 
these interlocutors for each other steadily remained, 



66 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

however, of the most deferential and considerate de- 
scription ; so that — without discourtesy — it was im- 
possible not to think of Byron's " mildest mannered 
man that ever scuttled ship or cut a throat." Under- 
neath this velvety, purring, conventional manner the 
observer could readily discern the fires of passion, 
prejudice, and strong antagonism. They make no 
parade in the House of Commons. They attend to 
their business. And upon every topic that is brought 
before their notice they have definite ideas, strong 
convictions, and settled purposes. The topic of Army 
Estimates upon this day seemed especially to arouse 
their ardour. Discussion of this was continually diver- 
sified by cries of " Oh ! " and of "Hear!" and of 
" Order ! " and sometimes those cries savoured more of 
derision than of compliment. Many persons spoke, but 
no person spoke well. An off-hand, matter-of-fact, 
shambling method of speech would seem to be the 
fashion in the British House of Commons. I remem- 
bered the anecdote that De Quincey tells, about 
Sheridan and the young member who quoted Greek. 
It was easy to perceive how completely out of place the 
sophomore orator would be, in that assemblage. Bri- 
tons like better to make speeches than to hear them, 
and they will never be slaves to bad oratory. The 
moment a windy gentleman got the floor, and began to 
read a manuscript respecting the Indian Government, 
as many as forty Commons arose and noisily walked 
out of the House. Your pilgrim likewise hailed the 
moment of his deliverance and was glad to escape to 
the open air. 

Books have been written to describe the Palace of 



vi THE PALACE OF WESTMINSTER 67 

Westminster; but it is observable that this structure, 
hcnyever much its magnificence deserves commemora- 
tive applause, is deficient, as yet, in the charm of asso- 
ciation. The old Palace of St. James, with its low, 
dusky walls, its round turrets, and its fretted battle- 
ments, is more impressive, because history has freighted 
it with meaning and time has made it beautiful. But 
the Palace of Westminster is a splendid structure. It 
covers eight acres of ground, on the bank of the 
Thames ; it contains eleven quadrangles and five hun- 
dred rooms ; and when its niches for statuary have 
been filled it will contain two hundred and twenty-six 
statues. The monuments in St. Stephen's Hall — into 
which you pass from Westminster Hall, which has been 
incorporated into the Palace and is its only ancient and 
therefore its most interesting feature — indicate, very 
eloquently, what a superb art gallery this will one day 
become. The statues are the images of Selden, Hamp- 
den, Falkland, Clarendon, Somers, Walpole, Chatham, 
Mansfield, Burke, Fox, Pitt, and Grattan. Those of 
Mansfield and Grattan present, perhaps, the most of 
character and power, making you feel that they are 
indubitably accurate portraits, and winning you by the 
charm of personality. There are statues, also, in West- 
minster Hall, commemorative of the Georges, William 
and Mary, and Anne ; but it is not of these you think, 
nor of any local and everyday object, when you stand 
beneath the wonderful roof of Richard the Second. 
Nearly eight hundred years " their cloudy wings 
expand" above that fabric, and copiously shed upon it 
the fragrance of old renown. Richard the Second was 
deposed there : Cromwell was there installed Lord 



6S SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

Protector of England : John Fisher, Sir Thomas More, 
and Strafford were there condemned : and it was there 
that the possible, if not usual, devotion of woman's 
heart was so touchingly displayed by her 

•■ Whose faith drew strength from death. 
And prayed her Russell up to God." 

No one can realise, without personal experience, the 
number and variety of pleasures accessible to the resi- 
dent of London. These may not be piquant to him 
who has them always within his reach. I met with 
several residents of the British capital who had always 
intended to visit the Tower but had never done so. But 
to the stranger they possess a constant and keen fasci- 
nation. The Derby this year [1877] was thought to be 
comparatively a tame race ; but I know of one spectator 
who saw it from the top of the grand stand and who 
thought that the scene it presented was wonderfully 
brilliant. The sky had been overcast with dull clouds 
till the moment when the race was won; but just as 
Archer, rising in his saddle, lifted his horse forward 
and gained the goal alone, the sun burst forth and shed 
upon the downs a sheen of gold, and lit up all the 
distant hills, and all the far-stretching roads that wind 
away from the region of Epsom like threads of silver 
through the green. Carrier-pigeons were instantly 
launched off to London, with the news of the victory of 
Silvio. There was one winner on the grand stand who 
had laid bets on Silvio, for no other reason than because 
that horse bore the prettiest name in the list. The 
Derby, like Christmas, comes but once a year ; but 
other allurements are almost perennial. Greenwich, 






vi THE PALACE OF WESTMINSTER 69 

for instance, with its white-bait dinner, invites the 
epicure during the best part of the London season. A 
favourite tavern is the Trafalgar — in which each room 
is named after some magnate of the old British navy; 
and Nelson, Hardy, and Rodney are household words. 
Another cheery place of resort is The Ship. The 
Hospitals are at Greenwich that Dr. Johnson thought 
to be too fine for a charity ; and back of these — which 
are ordinary enough now, in comparison with modern 
structures erected for a kindred purpose — stands the 
famous Observatory that keeps time for Europe. This 
place is hallowed also by the grave of Clive and by that 
of Wolfe — to the latter of whom, however, there is a 
monument in Westminster Abbey. Greenwich makes 
one think of Queen Elizabeth, who was born there, who 
often held her court there, and who often sailed thence, 
in her barge, up the river to Richmond — her favourite 
retreat and the scene of her last days and her pathetic 
death. Few spots can compare with Richmond, in 
brilliancy of landscape. That place — the Shene of old 
times — -was long a royal residence. The woods and 
meadows that you see from the terrace of the Star and 
Garter tavern — spread upon a rolling plain as far as 
the eye can reach — sparkle like emeralds ; and the 
Thames, dotted with little toy-like boats, shines with all 
the deep lustre of the blackest onyx. Richmond, for 
those who honour genius and who love to walk in the 
footsteps of renown, is full of interest. Dean Swift 
once had a house there, the site of which is still indi- 
cated. Pope's rural home was in the adjacent village 
of Twickenham, — where it may still be seen. Horace 
Walpole's stately mansion of Strawberry Hill is not far 



70 



SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 



CHAP. VI 



off. The poet Thomson long resided at Richmond, in 
a house now used as an hospital, and there he died. 
Edmund Kean and the once famous Mrs. Yates rest 
beneath Richmond church, and there also are the ashes 
of Thomson. As I drove through the sweetly sylvan 
Park of Richmond, in the late afternoon of a breezy 
summer day, and heard the whispering of the great 
elms, and saw the gentle, trustful deer couched at ease 
in the golden glades, I heard all the while, in the still 
chambers of thought, the tender lament of Collins — 
which is now a prophecy fulfilled : 

" Remembrance oft shall haunt the shore, 

When Thames in summer wreaths is drest ; 
And oft suspend the dashing oar, 
To bid his gentle spirit rest." 




Queen Elizabeth's Cradle. 




CHAPTER VII 



WARWICK AND KENILWORTH 




LL the way from London to Warwick it 
rained ; not heavily, but with a gentle 
fall. The gray clouds hung low over 
the landscape and softly darkened it ; so 
that meadows of scarlet and emerald, the 
shining foliage of elms, gray turret, nestled cottage and 
limpid river were as mysterious and evanescent as pic- 
tures seen in dreams. At Warwick the rain had fallen 
and ceased, and the walk from the station to the inn 
was on a road — or on a footpath by the roadside — 
still hard and damp with the water it had absorbed. A 
fresh wind blew from the fields, sweet with the rain and 
fragrant with the odour of leaves and flowers. The 
streets of the ancient town — entered through an old 
Norman arch — were deserted and silent. It was Sun- 
day when I first came to the country of Shakespeare ; 
and over all the region there brooded a sacred stillness 
peculiar to the time and harmonious beyond utterance 
with the sanctity of the place. As I strive, after many 
days, to call back and to fix in words the impressions 

71 



72 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

of that sublime experience, the same awe falls upon me 
now that fell upon me then. Nothing else upon earth 
— no natural scene, no relic of the past, no pageantry of 
the present — can vie with the shrine of Shakespeare, 
in power to impress, to humble, and to exalt the devout 
spirit that has been nurtured at the fountain of his tran- 
scendent genius. 

A fortunate way to approach Stratford-on-Avon is by 
Warwick and Kenilworth. Those places are not on a 
direct line of travel ; but the scenes and associations 
that they successively present are such as assume a 
symmetrical order, increase in interest, and grow to a 
delightful culmination. Objects that Shakespeare him- 
self must have seen are still visible there ; and little by 
little, in contact with these, the pilgrim through this 
haunted region is mentally saturated with that atmos- 
phere of serenity and romance in which the youth of 
Shakespeare was passed, and by which his works and 
his memory are embalmed. No one should come 
abruptly upon the poet's home. The mind needs to 
be prepared for the impression that awaits it; and in 
this gradual approach it finds preparation, both suitable 
and delicious. The luxuriance of the country, its fertile 
fields, its brilliant foliage, its myriads of wild-flowers, its 
pomp of colour and of physical vigour and bloom, do 
not fail to announce, to every mind, howsoever heedless, 
that this is a fit place for the birth and nurture of a great 
man. But this is not all. As you stroll in the quaint 
streets of Warwick, as you drive to Kenilworth, as you 
muse in that poetic ruin, as you pause in the old grave- 
yard in the valley below, as you meditate over the crum- 
bling fragments of the ancient abbey, at every step of the 



vii WARWICK AND KENILWORTH 73 

way you are haunted by a vague sense of an impending 
grandeur ; you are aware of a presence that fills and 
sanctifies the scene. The emotion that is thus inspired 
is very glorious ; never to be elsewhere felt ; and never 
to be forgotten. 

The cyclopaedias and the guide-books dilate, with 
much particularity and characteristic eloquence, upon 
Warwick Castle and other great features of Warwick- 
shire, but the attribute that all such records omit is the 
atmosphere ; and this, perhaps, is rather to be indicated 
than described. The prevailing quality of it is a certain 
high and sweet solemnity — a feeling kindred with the 
placid, happy melancholy that steals over the mind, 
when, on a sombre afternoon in autumn, you stand in 
the churchyard, and listen, amid rustling branches and 
sighing grass, to the low music of distant organ and 
chanting choir. Peace, haunted by romance, dwells 
here, in reverie. The great tower of Warwick, based in 
silver Avon and pictured in its slumbering waters, seems 
musing upon the centuries over which it has watched, 
and full of unspeakable knowledge and thought. The 
dark and massive gateways of the town and the timber- 
crossed fronts of its antique houses live on in the same 
strange dream and perfect repose ; and all along the 
drive to Kenilworth are equal images of rest — of a rest 
in which there is nothing supine or sluggish, no element 
of death or decay, but in which passion, imagination, 
beauty, and sorrow, seized at their topmost poise, seem 
crystallised in eternal calm. What opulence of splendid 
life is vital for ever in Kenilworth's crumbling ruin there 
are no words to say. What pomp of royal banners ! 
what dignity of radiant cavaliers ! what loveliness of 



74 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

stately and exquisite ladies ! what magnificence of ban- 
quets ! what wealth of pageantry ! what lustre of illu- 
mination ! The same festal music that the poet Gas- 
coigne heard there, three hundred years ago, is still 
sounding on, to-day. The proud and cruel Leicester 
still walks in his vaulted hall. The imperious face 
of the Virgin Queen still from her dais looks down 
on plumed courtiers and jewelled dames ; and still 
the moonlight, streaming through the turret-window, 
falls on the white bosom and the great, startled, black 
eyes of Amy Robsart, waiting for her lover. The gaze 
of the pilgrim, indeed, rests only upon old, gray, broken 
walls, overgrown with green moss and ivy, and pierced 
by irregular casements through which the sun shines, 
and the winds blow, and the rains drive, and the birds 
fly, amid utter desolation. But silence and ruin are 
here alike eloquent and awful ; and, much as the place 
impresses you by what remains, it impresses you far 
more by what has vanished. Ambition, love, pleasure, 
power, misery, tragedy — these are gone; and being 
gone they are immortal. I plucked, in the garden of 
Kenilworth, one of the most brilliant red roses that ever 
grew ; and as I pressed it to my lips I seemed to touch 
the lips of that superb, bewildering beauty who out- 
weighed England's crown (at least in story), and whose 
spirit is the everlasting genius of the place. 

There is a row of cottages opposite to the ruins of 
the castle, in which contentment seems to have made 
her home. The ivy embowers them. The roses cluster 
around their little windows. The greensward slopes 
away, in front, from big, flat stones that are embedded 
in the mossy sod before their doors. Down in the val- 






VII 



WARWICK AND KENILWORTH 



75 



ley, hard by, your steps stray through an ancient grave- 
yard — in which stands the parish church, a carefully 
restored building of the eleventh century, with tower, and 
clock, and bell — and past a few fragments of the Abbey 
and Monastery of St. Mary, destroyed in 1538. At 
many another point, on the roads betwixt Warwick and 
Kenilworth and Stratford, I came upon such nests of 
cosy, rustic quiet 
and seeming hap- 
piness. They 
build their coun- 
try houses low, in 
England, so that 
the trees over- 
hang them, and 
the cool, friendly, 
flower-gemmed 
earth — parent, 
and stay, and 
bourne of mortal 
life — is tenderly 
taken into their 
companionship. 
Here, at Kenil- 
worth, as elsewhere, at such places as Marlowe, Henley, 
Richmond, Maidenhead, Cookham, and the region round 
about Windsor, I saw many a sweet nook where tired 
life might be content to lay down its burden and enter 
into its rest. In all true love of country — a passion 
that seems to be more deeply felt in England than any- 
where else upon the globe — there is love for the literal 
soil itself : and surely that sentiment in the human heart 




Old Inn. 



76 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

is equally natural and pious which inspires and per- 
petuates man's desire that where he found his cradle 
he may also find his grave. 

Under a cloudy sky and through a landscape still wet 
and shining with recent rain the drive to Stratford was 
a pleasure so exquisite that at last it became a pain. 
Just as the carriage reached the junction of the War- 
wick and Snitterfield roads a ray of sunshine, streaming 
through a rift in the clouds, fell upon the neighbouring 
hillside, scarlet with poppies, and lit the scene as with 
the glory of a celestial benediction. This sunburst, 
neither growing larger nor coming nearer, followed 
all the way to Stratford ; 'and there, on a sudden, the 
clouds were lifted and dispersed, and " fair daylight " 
flooded the whole green countryside. The afternoon 
sun was still high in heaven when I alighted at the 
Red Horse and entered the little parlour of Wash- 
ington Irving. They keep the room much as it was 
when he left it; for they are proud of his gentle 
genius and grateful for his commemorative words. In 
a corner stands [1877] the small, old-fashioned hair- 
cloth arm-chair in which he sat, on that night of 
memory and of musing which he has described in TJie 
Sketch- Book. A brass plate is affixed to it, bearing 
his name ; and the visitor observes, in token of its 
age and service, that the hair-cloth of its seat is con- 
siderably worn and frayed. Every American pilgrim 
to Stratford sits in that chair; and looks with tender 
interest on the old fireplace ; and reads the memorials 
of Irving that are hung upon the walls : and it is 
no small comfort there to reflect that our illustrious 
countryman — whose name will be remembered with 



VII 



WARWICK AND KENILWORTH 



77 



honour, as long as literature is prized among men — 
was the first, in modern days, to discover the beau- 
ties and to interpret the poetry of the birthplace of 
Shakespeare. 



piii 


ilwiiiiilllfk 


d|*<sj 


P#i 


E^I=L:_ 




JViiiiiniii ii in i'iii'1 





From the Warwick Shield. 




CHAPTER VIII 



FIRST VIEW OF STRATFORD-ON-AVON 




NCE again, as it did on that delicious 
summer afternoon which is for ever mem- 
orable in my life, the golden glory of the 
westering sun burns on the gray spire of 
Stratford church, and on the ancient 
graveyard below, — wherein the mossy stones lean this 
way and that, in sweet and orderly confusion, — and 
on the peaceful avenue of limes, and on the burnished 
water of silver Avon. The tall, pointed, many-coloured 
windows of the church glint in the evening light. A 
cool and fragrant wind is stirring the branches and the 
grass. The small birds, calling to their mates or sport- 
ing in the wanton pleasure of their airy life, are circling 
over the church roof or hiding in little crevices of its 
walls. On the vacant meadows across the river stretch 
away the long and level shadows of the pompous elms. 
Here and there, upon the river's brink, are pairs of 
what seem lovers, strolling by the reedy marge, or sit- 
ting upon the low tombs, in the Sabbath quiet. As the 
sun sinks and the dusk deepens, two figures of infirm 

78 







Holy Trinity Church. 



80 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

old women, clad in black, pass with slow and feeble 
steps through the avenue of limes, and vanish around 
an angle of the church — that now stands all in shadow : 
and no sound is heard but the faint rustling of the 
leaves. 

Once again, as on that sacred night, the streets of 
Stratford are deserted and silent under the star-lit sky, 
and I am standing, in the dim darkness, at the door of 
the cottage in which Shakespeare was born. It is 
empty, dark, and still ; and in all the neighbourhood 
there is no stir nor sign of life ; but the quaint case- 
ments and gables of this haunted house, its antique 
porch, and the great timbers that cross its front are 
luminous as with a light of their own, so that I see 
them with perfect vision. I stand there a long time, 
and I know that I am to remember these sights for 
ever, as I see them now. After a while, with lingering 
reluctance, I turn away from this marvellous spot, and, 
presently passing through a little, winding lane, I walk 
in the High Street of the town, and mark, at the end 
of the prospect, the illuminated clock in the tower of 
the chapel of the Holy Cross. A few chance-directed 
steps bring me to what was New Place once, where 
Shakespeare died ; and there again I pause, and long 
remain in meditation, gazing into the enclosed garden, 
where, under screens of wire, are certain strange frag- 
ments of lime and stone. These — which I do not 
then know — are the remains of the foundation of 
Shakespeare's house. The night wanes ; and still I 
walk in Stratford streets ; and by and by I am standing 
on the bridge that spans the Avon, and looking down 
at the thick-clustering stars reflected in its black and 






viii FIRST VIEW OF STRATFORD-ON-AVON 81 

silent stream. At last, under the roof of the Red 
Horse, I sink into a troubled slumber, from which soon 
a strain of celestial music — strong, sweet, jubilant, and 
splendid — awakens me in an instant; and I start up 
in my bed — to find that all around me is still as death ; 
and then, drowsily, far-off, the bell strikes three, in its 
weird and lonesome tower. 

Every pilgrim to Stratford knows, in a general way, 
what he will there behold. Copious and frequent de- 
scription of its Shakespearean associations has made the 
place familiar to all the world. Yet these Shake- 
spearean associations keep a perennial freshness, and are 
equally a surprise to the sight and a wonder to the soul. 
Though three centuries old they are not stricken with 
age or decay. The house in Henley Street, in which, 
according to accepted tradition, Shakespeare was born, 
has been from time to time repaired ; and so it has been 
kept sound, without having been materially changed 
from what it was in Shakespeare's youth. The kind 
ladies, Miss Maria and Miss Caroline Chataway, who 
take care of it [1877], and with so much pride and 
courtesy show it to the visitor, called my attention to a 
bit of the ceiling of the upper chamber — the room of 
Shakespeare's birth — which had begun to droop, and 
had been skilfully secured with little iron laths. It is in 
this room that the numerous autographs are scrawled 
over the ceiling and walls. One side of the chimney- 
piece here is called "The Actor's Pillar," so richly is it 
adorned with the names of actors ; Edmund Kean's sig- 
nature being among them, and still legible. On one of 
the window-panes, cut with a diamond, is the name of 
" W. Scott " ; and all the panes are scratched with sig- 



82 



SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 



CHAP. 



natures — making you think of Douglas Jerrold's re- 
mark on bad Shakespearean commentators, that they 
resemble persons who write on glass with diamonds, and 
obscure the light with a multitude of scratches. The 
floor of this room, uncarpeted and almost snow-white 
with much washing, seems still as hard as iron ; yet 
its boards have been hollowed by wear, and the heads 

of the old nails that 
fasten it down gleam 
like polished silver. 
You can sit in an 
antique chair, in a 
corner of this room, 
and think unutterable 
things. There is, cer- 
tainly, no word that 
can even remotely sug- 
gest the feeling with 
which you are then 
overwhelmed. You 
can sit also in the 
room below, in the 
seat, in the corner of 
the wide fireplace, that Shakespeare himself must often 
have occupied. They keep but a few sticks of furni- 
ture in any part of the cottage. One room is devoted 
to Shakespearean relics — more or less authentic ; one 
of which is a schoolboy's desk that was obtained from 
the old grammar-school in Church Street in which 
Shakespeare was once a pupil. At the back of the 
cottage, now isolated from contiguous structures, is a 
pleasant garden, and at one side is a cosy, luxurious little 




The Inglenook. 



Vin FIRST VIEW OF STRATFORD-ON-AVON 83 

cabin — the home of order and of pious decorum — for 
the ladies who are custodians of the Shakespeare House. 
If you are a favoured visitor, you may receive from that 
garden, at parting, all the flowers, prettily mounted upon 
a sheet of paper, that poor Ophelia names, in the scene 
of her madness. " There's rosemary, that's for remem- 
brance : and there is pansies, that's for thoughts : there's 
fennel for you, and columbines : there's rue for you : 
there's a daisy : — I would give you some violets, but 
they withered all when my father died." 

The minute knowledge that Shakespeare had of plants 
and flowers, and the loving appreciation with which he 
describes pastoral scenery, are explained to the rambler 
in Stratford, by all that he sees and hears. There is a 
walk across the fields to Shottery that the poet must 
often have taken, in the days of his courtship of Anne 
Hathaway. The path to this hamlet passes through 
pastures and gardens, flecked everywhere with those 
brilliant scarlet poppies that are so radiant and so be- 
witching in the English landscape. To have grown up 
amid such surroundings, and, above all, to have expe- 
rienced amid them the passion of love, must have been, 
for Shakespeare, the intuitive acquirement of ample and 
specific knowledge of their manifold beauties. It would 
be hard to find a sweeter rustic retreat than Anne Hatha- 
way's cottage is, even now. Tall trees embower it ; and 
over its porches, and all along its picturesque, irregu- 
lar front, and on its thatched roof, the woodbine and the 
ivy climb, and there are wild roses and the maiden's 
blush. For the young poet's wooing no place could be 
fitter than this. He would always remember it with 
tender joy. They show you, in that cottage, an old 



chap, viii FIRST VIEW OF STRATFORD-ON-AVON 85 

settle, by the fireside, whereon the lovers may have sat 
together : it formerly stood outside the door : and in the 
rude little chamber next the roof an antique, carved bed- 
stead, that Anne Hathaway once owned. This, it is 
thought, continued to be Anne's home for several years 
of her married life — her husband being absent in Lon- 
don, and sometimes coming down to visit her, at Shottery. 
" He was wont," says John Aubrey, the antiquary, writ- 
ing in 1680, "to go to his native country once a year." 
The last surviving descendant of the Hathaway family 
— Mrs. Baker — lives in the house now, and welcomes 
with homely hospitality the wanderers, from all lands, 
who seek — in a sympathy and reverence most hon- 
ourable to human nature — the shrine of Shakespeare's 
love. There is one such wanderer who will never for- 
get the farewell clasp of that kind woman's hand, and 
who has never parted with her gift of woodbine and 
roses from the porch of Anne Hathaway's cottage. 

In England it is living, more than writing about it, 
that is esteemed by the best persons. They prize good 
writing, but they prize noble living far more. This is 
an ingrained principle, and not an artificial habit, and 
this principle doubtless was as potent in Shakespeare's 
age as it is to-day. Nothing could be more natural 
than that this great writer should think less of his 
works than of the establishment of his home. He 
would desire, having won a fortune, to dwell in his 
native place, to enjoy the companionship and esteem 
of his neighbours, to participate in their pleasures, 
to help them in their troubles, to aid in the improve- 
ment and embellishment of the town, to deepen his 
hold upon the affections of all around him, and to 



S6 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

feel that, at last, honoured and lamented, his ashes 
would be laid in the village church where he had 

worshipped — 

" Among familiar names to rest, 
And in the places of his youth." 

It was in 1597, twelve years after he went to London, 
that the poet began to buy property in Stratford, and it 
was about eight years after his first purchase that he 
finally settled there, at New Place. [J. O. Halliwell- 
Phillips says that it was in 1609 : There is a record 
alleging that as late as that year Shakespeare still 
retained a residence in Clink Street, Southwark.] This 
mansion was altered by Sir Hugh Clopton, who owned 
it toward the middle of the eighteenth century, and it 
was destroyed by the Rev. Francis Gastrell, in 1759. 
The grounds, which have been reclaimed, — chiefly 
through the zeal of J. O. Halliwell-Phillips, — are laid 
out according to the model they are supposed to have 
presented when Shakespeare owned them. His lawn, 
his orchard, and his garden are indicated; and a scion 
of his mulberry is growing on the spot where that 
famous tree once flourished. You can see a part of the 
foundation of the old house. It was made of brick and 
timber, it seems to have had gables, and no doubt it 
was fashioned with the beautiful curves and broken 
lines of the Tudor architecture. They show, upon the 
lawn, a stone of considerable size, that surmounted its 
door. The site — still a central and commodious one — 
is on the corner of Chapel Street and Chapel Lane ; 
and on the opposite corner stands now, as it has stood 
for eight hundred years, the chapel of the Holy Cross, 
with square, dark tower, fretted parapet, pointed case- 



vni FIRST VIEW OF STRATFORD-ON-AVON 87 

ments, and Norman porch — one of the most romantic 
and picturesque little churches in England. It was easy, 
when musing on that storied spot, to fancy Shakespeare, 
in the gloaming of a summer day, strolling on the lawn, 
beneath his elms, and listening to the soft and solemn 
music of the chapel organ ; or to think of him as step- 
ping forth from his study, in the late and lonesome 
hours of the night, and pausing to " count the clock," 
or note the " exhalations whizzing in the air." 

The funeral train of Shakespeare, on that dark day 
when it moved from New Place to Stratford Church, 
had but a little way to go. The river, surely, must 
have seemed to hush its murmurs, the trees to droop 
their branches, the sunshine to grow dim — as that sad 
procession passed ! His grave is under the gray 
pavement of the chancel, near the altar, and his wife 
and one of his daughters are buried beside him. The 
pilgrim who reads upon the gravestone those rugged 
lines of grievous entreaty and awful imprecation that 
guard the poet's rest feels no doubt that he is listening 
to his living voice — for he has now seen the enchant- 
ing beauty of the place, and he has now felt what 
passionate affection it can inspire. Feeling and not 
manner would naturally have prompted that abrupt, 
agonised supplication and threat. Nor does such a 
pilgrim doubt, when gazing on the painted bust, above 
the grave, — made by Gerard Jonson, stonecutter, — 
that he beholds the authentic face of Shakespeare. It 
is not the heavy face of the portraits that represent it. 
There is a rapt, transfigured quality in it, that those 
copies do not convey. It is thoughtful, austere, and 
yet benign. Shakespeare was a hazel-eyed man, with 



88 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

auburn hair, and the colours that he wore were scarlet 
and black. Being painted, and also being set up at a 
considerable height on the church wall, the bust does 
not disclose what is sufficiently perceptible in a cast 
from it — that it is the copy of a mask from the dead 
face. One of the cheeks is a little swollen and the 
tongue, slightly protruded, is caught between the lips. 
The idle theory that the poet was not a gentleman 
of consideration in his own time and place falls utterly 
and for ever from the mind when you stand at his 
grave. No man could have a more honourable or 
sacred place of sepulture ; and while it illustrates the 
profound esteem of the community in which he lived it 
testifies to the religious character by which that esteem 
was confirmed. " I commend my soul into the hands 
of God, my Creator, hoping, and assuredly believing, 
through the only merits of Jesus Christ, my Saviour, to 
be made partaker of life everlasting." So said Shake- 
speare, in his last Will, bowing in humble reverence the 
mightiest mind — as vast and limitless in the power to 
comprehend as to express ! — that ever wore the gar- 
ments of mortality. 1 

Once again there is a sound of organ music, very low 
and soft, in Stratford Church, and the dim light, broken 

1 It ought perhaps to be remarked that this prelude to Shakespeare's 
Will may not have been intended by him as a profession of faith, but may 
have been signed simply as a legal formula. His works denote a mind of 
high and broad spiritual convictions, untrammelled by creed or doctrine. 
His inclination, probably, was toward the Roman Catholic church, because 
of the poetry that is in it : but such a man as Shakespeare would have 
viewed all religious beliefs in a kindly spirit, and would have made no em- 
phatic professions. The Will was executed on March 25, 161 6. It covers 
three sheets of paper; it is not in Shakespeare's hand-writing, but each 
sheet bears his signature. It is in the British Museum. 



FIRST VIEW OF STRATFORD-ON-AVON 



89 



by the richly stained windows, streams across the dusky 
chancel, filling the still air with opal haze and flooding 
those gray gravestones with its mellow radiance. Not 
a word is spoken ; but, at intervals, the rustle of the 
leaves is audible in a sighing wind. What visions are 
these, that suddenly fill the region ! What royal faces 
of monarchs, proud with power, or pallid with anguish ! 
What sweet, imperial women, gleeful with happy youth 
and love, or wide-eyed and rigid in tearless woe ! What 
warriors, with serpent diadems, defiant of death and 
hell ! The mournful eyes of Hamlet ; the wild counte- 
nance of Lear ; Ariel with his harp, and Prospero with 
his wand ! Here is no death ! All these, and more, 
are immortal shapes ; and he that made them so, 
although his mortal part be but a handful of dust in 
yonder crypt, is a glorious angel beyond the stars. 








Distant View of Stratford, 




CHAPTER IX 



LONDON NOOKS AND CORNERS 




HOSE persons upon whom the spirit of 
the past has power — and it has not power 
upon every mind ! — are aware of the 
mysterious charm that invests certain 
familiar spots and objects, in all old cities. 
London, to observers of this class, is a never-ending 
delight. Modern cities, for the most part, reveal a 
definite and rather a commonplace design. Their main 
avenues are parallel. Their shorter streets bisect their 
main avenues. They are diversified with rectangular 



squares. Their configuration, in brief, 



the 



sapient, utilitarian forethought of the land-surveyor 
and civil engineer. The ancient British capital, on the 
contrary, is the expression — slowly and often narrowly 
made — of many thousands of characters. It is a city 
that has happened — and the stroller through the old 
part of it comes continually upon the queerest imagina- 
ble alleys, courts, and nooks. Not far from Drury Lane 
Theatre, for instance, hidden away in a clump of dingy 
houses, is a dismal little graveyard — the same that 

qo 



chap, ix LONDON NOOKS AND CORNERS 91 

Dickens has chosen, in his novel of Bleak House, as the 
sepulchre of little Jo's friend, the first love of the unfor- 
tunate Lady Dedlock. It is a doLeful spot, draped in 
the robes of faded sorrow, and crowded into the twilight 
of obscurity by the thick-clustering habitations of men. 1 
The Cripplegate church, St. Giles's, a less lugubrious 
spot and less difficult of access, is nevertheless strangely 
sequestered, so that it also affects the observant eye as 
equally one of the surprises of London. I saw it, for 
the first time, on a gray, sad Sunday, a little before 
twilight, and when the service was going on within its 
venerable walls. The footsteps of John Milton were 
sometimes on the threshold of the Cripplegate, and his 
grave is in the nave of that ancient church. A simple 
flat stone marks that sacred spot, and many a heedless 
foot tramples over that hallowed dust. From Golden 
Lane, which is close by, you can see the tower of this 
church ; and, as you walk from the place where Milton 
lived to the place where his ashes repose, you seem, 
with a solemn, awe-stricken emotion, to be actually 
following in his funeral train. At St. Giles's occurred 
the marriage of Cromwell. 2 I remembered — as I stood 
there and conjured up that scene of golden joy and 
hope — the place of the Lord Protector's coronation 
in Westminster Hall ; the place, still marked, in West- 
minster Abbey, where his body was buried ; and old 
Temple Bar, on which (if not on Westminster Hall) his 

1 That place has been renovated and is no longer a disgrace. 

2 The church of St. Giles was built in 1 117 by Queen Maud. It was 
demolished in 1623 and rebuilt in 1 731. The tomb of Richard Pendrell, 
who saved Charles the Second, after Worcester fight, in 1651, is in the 
churchyard. 



92 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

mutilated corse was finally exposed to the blind rage of 
the fickle populace. A little time — a very little time 
— serves to gather up equally the happiness and the 
anguish, the conquest and the defeat, the greatness and 
the littleness of human life, and to cover them all with 
silence. 

But not always with oblivion. Those quaint churches, 
and many other mouldering relics of the past, in Lon- 
don, are haunted with associations that never can perish 
out of remembrance. In fact the whole of the old city 
impresses you as densely invested with an atmosphere 
of human experience, dark, sad, and lamentable. Walk- 
ing, alone, in ancient quarters of it, after midnight, I 
was aware of the oppressive sense of tragedies that 
have been acted and misery that has been endured in 
its dusky streets and melancholy houses. They do not 
err who say that the spiritual life of man leaves its 
influence in the physical objects by which he is sur- 
rounded. Night-walks in London will teach you that, 
if they teach you nothing else. I went more than once 
into Brooke Street, Holborn, and traced the desolate 
footsteps of poor Thomas Chatterton to the scene of his 
self-murder and agonised, pathetic, deplorable death. 
It is more than a century (1770), since that "marvellous 
boy " was driven to suicide by neglect, hunger, and 
despair. They are tearing down the houses on one 
side of Brooke Street now (1877); it is doubtful which 
house was No. 4, in the attic of which Chatterton died, 
and doubtful whether it remains : his grave — a pauper's 
grave, that was made in a workhouse burial-ground, in 
Shoe Lane, long since obliterated — is unknown ; but his 
presence hovers about that region ; his strange and 




€m! 



g 



ix LONDON NOOKS AND CORNERS 93 

touching story tinges its commonness with the mystical 
moonlight of romance ; and his name is blended with it 
for ever. On another night I walked from St. James's 
Palace to Whitehall (the York Place of Cardinal Wol- 
sey), and viewed the ground that Charles the First must 
have traversed, on his way to the scaffold. The story 
of the slaughter of that king, always sorrowful to 
remember, is very grievous to consider, when you 
realise, upon the actual scene of his ordeal and death, 
his exalted fortitude and his bitter agony. It seemed 
as if I could almost hear his voice, as it sounded on 
that fateful morning, asking that his body might be 
more warmly clad, lest, in the cold January air, he 
should shiver, and so, before the eyes of his enemies, 
should seem to be trembling with fear. The Puritans, 
having brought that poor man to the place of execution, 
kept him in suspense from early morning till after two 
o'clock in the day, while they debated over a proposition 
to spare his life — upon any condition they might choose 
to make — that had been sent to them by his son, Prince 
Charles. Old persons were alive in London, not very 
long ago, who remembered having seen, in their child- 
hood, the window, in the end of the Whitehall Banquet 
House — now a Chapel Royal and all that remains of 
the ancient palace — through which the doomed mon- 
arch walked forth to the block. It was long ago walled 
up, and the palace has undergone much alteration since 
the days of the Stuarts. In the rear of Whitehall 
stands a bronze statue of James the Second, by Roubiliac 
(whose marbles are numerous, in the Abbey and else- 
where in London, and whose grave is in the church of 
St. Martin), one of the most graceful works of that 



94 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

spirited sculptor. The figure is finely modelled. The 
face is dejected and full of reproach. The right hand 
points, with a truncheon, toward the earth. It is impos- 
sible to mistake the ruminant, melancholy meaning of 
this memorial ; and equally it is impossible to walk 
without both thought that instructs and emotion that 
elevates through a city which thus abounds with traces 
of momentous incident and representative experience. 

The literary pilgrim in London has this double 
advantage — that while he communes with the past he 
may enjoy in the present. Yesterday and to-day are 
commingled here, in a way that is almost ludicrous. 
When you turn from Roubiliac's statue of James your 
eyes rest upon the retired house of Disraeli. If you 
walk in Whitehall, toward the Palace of Westminster, 
some friend may chance to tell you how the great Duke 
of Wellington walked there, in the feebleness of his 
age, from the Horse Guards to the House of Lords ; 
and with what pleased complacency the old warrior 
used to boast of his skill in threading a crowded thor- 
oughfare, — unaware that the police, acting by particu- 
lar command, protected his revered person from errant 
cabs and pushing pedestrians. As I strolled one day 
past Lambeth Palace it happened that the palace gates 
were suddenly unclosed and that His Grace the Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury came forth, on horseback, from 
that episcopal residence, and ambled away towards the 
House of Lords. It is the same arched portal through 
which, in other days, passed out the stately train of 
Wolsey. It is the same towered palace that Queen 
Elizabeth looked upon as her barge swept past, on its 
watery track to Richmond. It is for ever associated 



ix LONDON NOOKS AND CORNERS 95 

with the memory of Thomas Cromwell. In the church, 
hard by, rest the ashes of men distinguished in the most 
diverse directions — Jackson, the clown; and Tenison, 
the archbishop, the " honest, prudent, laborious, and 
benevolent " primate of William the Third, who was 
thought worthy to succeed in office the illustrious 
Tillotson. The cure of souls is sought here with just 
as vigorous energy as when Tillotson wooed by his 
goodness and charmed by his winning eloquence. Not 
a great distance from this spot you come upon the 
college at Dulwich that Edward Alleyn founded, in the 
time of Shakespeare, and that still subsists upon the old 
actor's endowment. It is said that Alleyn — who was 
a man of fortune, and whom a contemporary epigram 
styles the best actor of his day — gained the most of 
his money by the exhibition of bears. But, howsoever 
gained, he made a good use of it. His tomb is in the 
centre of the college. Here may be seen one of the 
best picture-galleries in England. One of the cherished 
paintings in that collection is the famous portrait, by 
Sir Joshua Reynolds, of Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic 
Muse — remarkable for its colour, and splendidly expos- 
itive of the boldness of feature, brilliancy of counte- 
nance, and stately grace of posture for which its original 
was distinguished. Another represents two renowned 
beauties of their day — the Linley sisters — who became 
Mrs. Sheridan and Mrs. Tickel. You do not wonder, 
as you look on those fair faces, sparkling with health, 
arch with merriment, lambent with sensibility, and soft 
with goodness and feeling, that Sheridan should have 
fought duels for such a prize as the lady of his love ; or 
that those fascinating creatures, favoured alike by the 



96 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

Graces and the Muse, should in their gentle lives have 
been, "like Juno's swans, coupled and inseparable." 
Mary, Mrs. Tickel, died first; and Moore, in his Life of 
Sheridan, has preserved a lament for her, written by 
Eliza, Mrs. Sheridan, which — for deep, true sorrow 
and melodious eloquence — is worthy to be named with 
Thomas Tickel's monody on Addison or Cowper's 
memorial lines on his mother's picture : — 

" Shall all the wisdom of the world combined 
Erase thy image, Mary, from my mind, 
Or bid me hope from others to receive 
The fond affection thou alone couldst give? 
Ah no, my best beloved, thou still shalt be 
My friend, my sister, all the world to me ! " 

Precious also among the gems of the Dulwich gallery 
are certain excellent specimens of the gentle, dreamy 
style of Murillo. The pilgrim passes on, by a short 
drive, to Sydenham, and dines at the Crystal Palace — 
and still he finds the faces of the past and the present 
confronted, in a manner that is almost comic. Nothing 
could be more aptly representative of the practical, osten- 
tatious phase of the spirit of to-day than is this enor- 
mous, opulent, and glittering " palace made of windows." 
Yet I saw there the carriage in which Napoleon Buona- 
parte used to drive, at St. Helena — a vehicle as sombre 
and ghastly as were the broken fortunes of its death- 
stricken master ; and, sitting at a table close by, I saw 
the son of Buonaparte's fiery champion, William 
Hazlitt. 

It was a gray and misty evening. The plains below 
the palace terraces were veiled in shadow, through 
which, here and there, twinkled the lights of some 



... ' . 

• ... 



?77 



»7fl 



, 



f « 



._S^*i2 



LONDON NOOKS AND CORNERS 



97 



peaceful villa. Far away the spires and domes of Lon- 
don, dimly seen, pierced the city's nightly pall of smoke. 
It was a dream too sweet to last. It ended when all 
the illuminations were burnt out ; when the myriads of 
red and green and yellow stars had fallen ; and all the 
silver fountains had ceased to play. 







The Crown Inn, Dulwich. 




CHAPTER X 



RELICS OF LORD BYRON 




HE Byron Memorial Loan Collection, that 
was displayed at the Albert Memorial 
Hall, for a short time in the summer of 
1877, did not attract much attention: yet 
it was a vastly impressive show of relics. 
The catalogue names seventy-four objects, together with 
thirty-nine designs for a monument to Byron. The 
design that has been chosen presents a seated figure, of 
the young sailor-boy type. The right hand supports 
the chin; the left, resting on the left knee, holds an 
open book and a pencil. The dress consists of a loose 
shirt, open at the throat and on the bosom, a flowing 
neckcloth, and wide, marine trousers. Byron's clog, 
Boatswain — commemorated in the well-known misan- 
thropic epitaph — 

" To mark a friend's remains these stones arise, 
I never knew but one, and here he lies " — 

is shown, in effigy, at the poet's feet. The treatment 
of the subject, in this model, certainly deserves to be 

98 



chap, x RELICS OF LORD BYRON 99 

called free, but the general effect of the work is finical. 
The statue will probably be popular ; but it will give no 
adequate idea of the man. Byron was both massive 
and intense; and this image is no more than the usual 
hero of nautical romance. (It was dedicated in May, 
1880, and it stands in Hamilton Gardens, near Hyde 
Park Corner, London.) 

It was the treasure of relics, however, and not the 
statuary, that more attracted notice. The relics were 
exhibited in three glass cases, exclusive of large portraits. 
It is impossible to make the reader — supposing him to 
revere this great poet's genius and to care for his mem- 
ory — feel the thrill of emotion that was aroused by 
actual sight, and almost actual touch, of objects so inti- 
mately associated with the living Byron. Five pieces 
of his hair were shown, one of which was cut off", after 
his death, by Captain Trelawny — the remarkable gentle- 
man who says that he uncovered the legs of the corse, 
in order to ascertain the nature and extent of their de- 
formity. All those locks of hair are faded and all pre- 
sent a mixture of gray and auburn. Byron's hair was 
not, seemingly, of a fine texture, and it turned gray early 
in life. Those tresses were lent to the exhibition by 
Lady Dorchester, John Murray, H. M. Robinson, D.D., 
and E. J. Trelawny. A strangely interesting memorial 
was a little locket of plain gold, shaped like a heart, that 
Byron habitually wore. Near to this was the crucifix 
found in his bed at Missolonghi, after his death. It is 
about ten inches long and is made of ebony. A small 
bronze figure of Christ is displayed upon it, and at the 
feet of the figure are cross-bones and a skull, of the 
same metal. A glass beaker, that Byron gave to his 



100 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

butler, in 1815, attracted attention by its portly size and, 
to the profane fancy, hinted that his lordship had formed 
a liberal estimate of that butler's powers of suction. 
Four articles of head-gear occupied a prominent place 
in one of the cabinets. Two are helmets that Byron 
wore when he was in Greece, in 1824 — and very 
queer must have been his appearance when he wore 
them. One is light blue, the other dark green ; both 
are faded ; both are fierce with brass ornaments and 
barbaric with brass scales like those of a snake. A 
comelier object is the poet's " boarding-cap " — a leather 
slouch, turned up with green velvet and studded with 
brass nails. Many small articles of Byron's property 
were scattered through the cases. A corpulent little 
silver watch, with Arabic numerals upon its face, and a 
meerschaum pipe, not much coloured, were among 
them. The cap that he sometimes wore, during the 
last years of his life, — the one depicted in a well-known 
sketch of him by Count D'Orsay, — was exhibited, and 
so was D'Orsay's portrait. The cap is of green velvet, 
not much tarnished, and is encircled by a gold band and 
faced by an ugly visor. The face in the sketch is super- 
cilious and defiant. A better, and obviously truer 
sketch is that made by Cattermole, which also was in 
this exhibition. Strength in despair and a dauntless 
spirit that shines through the ravages of irremediable 
suffering are the qualities of this portrait; and they 
make it marvellously effective. Thorwaldsen's fine bust 
of Byron, made for Hobhouse, and also the celebrated 
Phillips portrait — that Scott said was the best likeness 
of Byron ever painted — occupied places in this group. 
The copy of the New Testament that Lady Byron gave 



x RELICS OF LORD BYRON 101 

to her husband, and that he, in turn, presented to Lady 
Caroline Lamb, was there, and is a pocket volume, 
bound in black leather, with the inscription, " From a 
sincere and anxious friend," written in a stiff, formal 
hand, across the fly-leaf. A gold ring that the poet 
constantly wore, and the collar of his dog Boatswain — a 
discoloured band of brass, with sharply jagged edges 
— should also be named as among the most interesting 
of the relics. 

But the most remarkable objects of all were the 
manuscripts. These comprise the original draft of the 
third canto of " Childe Harold," written on odd bits of 
paper, during Byron's journey from London to Venice, 
in 1816; the first draft of the fourth canto, together 
with a clean copy of it ; the notes to " Marino Faliero " ; 
the concluding stage directions — much scrawled and 
blotted — in " Heaven and Earth " ; a document con- 
cerning the poet's matrimonial trouble ; and about fifteen 
of his letters. The passages seen are those beginning 
" Since my young days of passion, joy, or pain " ; " To 
bear unhurt what time cannot abate " ; and in canto 
fourth the stanzas 118 to 129 inclusive. The writing is 
free and strong, and it still remains legible although the 
paper is yellow with age. Altogether those relics were 
touchingly significant of the strange, dark, sad career of 
a wonderful man. Yet, as already said, they attracted 
but little notice. The memory of Byron seems darkened, 
as with the taint of lunacy. " He did strange things," 
one Englishman said to me ; " and there was something 
queer about him." The London house in which he was 
born, in Holies Street, Cavendish Square, is marked 
with a tablet, — according to a custom instituted by a 



102 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

society of arts. (It was torn down in 1890 and its site is 
now occupied by a shop, bearing the name of John Lewis 
& Co.) Two houses in which he lived, No. 8 St. James 
Street, near the old palace, and No. 139 Piccadilly, 
are not marked. The house of his birth was occupied 
in 1877 by a descendant of Elizabeth Fry, the philan- 
thropist. 

The custom of marking the houses associated with 
great names is obviously a good one, and it ought to 
be adopted in other countries. Two buildings, one in 
Westminster and one in the grounds of the South Ken- 
sington Museum, bear the name of Franklin ; and I 
also saw memorial tablets to Dryden and Burke in 
Gerrard Street, to Dryden in Fetter Lane, to Mrs. 
Siddons in Baker Street, to Sir Joshua Reynolds and 
to Hogarth in Leicester Square, to Garrick in the Adel- 
phi Terrace, to Louis Napoleon, and to many other 
renowned individuals. The room that Sir Joshua occu- 
pied as a studio is now an auction mart. The stone 
stairs leading up to it are much worn, but they remain 
as they were when, it may be imagined, Burke, Johnson, 
Goldsmith, Langton, Beauclerk, and Boswell walked 
there, on many a festive night in the old times. 

It is a breezy, slate-coloured evening in July. I look 
from the window of a London house that fronts a spa- 
cious park. Those great elms, which in their wealth 
of foliage and irregular and pompous expanse of limb 
are finer than all other trees of their class, fill the pros- 
pect, and nod and murmur in the wind. Through a 
rift in their heavy-laden boughs is visible a long vista 
of green field, in which many children are at play. 
Their laughter and the rustle of leaves, with now and 



RELICS OF LORD BYRON 



103 



then the click of a horse's hoofs upon the road near by, 
make up the music of this hallowed hour. The sky is 
a little overcast but not gloomy. As I muse upon this 
delicious scene the darkness slowly gathers, the stars 
come out, and presently the moon rises, and blanches 
the meadow with silver light. Such has been the 
English summer, with scarce a hint of either heat or 
storm. 




ttjdow 



CHAPTER XI 



WESTMINSTER ABBEY 




T is strange that the life of the past, in 
its unfamiliar remains and fading traces, 
should so far surpass the life of the pres- 
ent, in impressive force and influence. 
Human characteristics, although mani- 
fested under widely different conditions, were the same 
in old times that they are now. It is not in them, 
surely, that we are to seek for the mysterious charm 
that hallows ancient objects and the historical antiquities 
of the world. There is many a venerable, weather- 
stained church in London, at sight of which your steps 
falter and your thoughts take a wistful, melancholy 
turn — though then you may not know either who built 
it, or who has worshipped in it, or what dust of the 
dead is mouldering in its vaults. The spirit which thus 
instantly possesses and controls you is not one of asso- 
ciation, but is inherent in the place. Time's shadow 
on the works of man, like moonlight on a landscape, 
gives only graces to the view — tingeing them, the 
while, with sombre sheen — and leaves all blemishes in 

104 




Westminster Abbey, from the Triforium. 



106 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap, xi 

darkness. This may suggest the reason that relics of 
bygone years so sadly please and strangely awe us, in 
the passing moment ; or it may be that we involuntarily 
contrast their apparent permanence with our own eva- 
nescent mortality, and so are dejected with a sentiment 
of dazed helplessness and solemn grief. This sentiment 
it is — allied to bereaved love and a natural wish for 
remembrance after death — that has filled Westminster 
Abbey, and many another holy mausoleum, with sculp- 
tured memorials of the departed ;. and this, perhaps, is 
the subtle power that makes us linger beside them, 
"with thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls." 

When the gentle angler Izaak Walton went into 
Westminster Abbey to visit the grave of Casaubon, he 
scratched his initials on the scholar's monument, where 
the record, "I. W., 1658," may still be read by the 
stroller in Poets' Corner. One might well wish to follow 
that example, and even thus to associate his name with 
the great cathedral. And not in pride but in humble 
reverence ! Here if anywhere on earth self-assertion 
is rebuked and human eminence set at nought. Among 
all the impressions that crowd upon the mind in this 
wonderful place that which oftenest recurs and longest 
remains is the impression of man's individual insignifi- 
cance. This is salutary, but it is also dark. There 
can be no enjoyment of the Abbey till, after much 
communion with the spirit of the place, your soul is 
soothed by its beauty rather than overwhelmed by its 
majesty, and your mind ceases from the vain effort to 
grasp and interpret its tremendous meaning. You can- 
not long endure, and you never can express, the sense 
of grandeur that is inspired by Westminster Abbey; 



10S SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

but, when at length its shrines and tombs and statues 
become familiar, when its chapels, aisles, arches, and 
cloisters are grown companionable, and you can stroll 
and dream undismayed " through rows of warriors and 
through walks of kings," there is no limit to the pensive 
memories they awaken and the poetic fancies they 
prompt. In this church are buried, among generations 
of their nobles and courtiers, fourteen monarchs of 
England — beginning with the Saxon Sebert and end- 
ing with George the Second. Fourteen queens rest 
here, and many children of the royal blood who never 
came to the throne. Here, confronted in a haughty 
rivalry of solemn pomp, rise the equal tombs of Eliza- 
beth Tudor and Mary Stuart. Queen Eleanor's dust 
is here, and here, too, is the dust of the grim Queen 
Mary. In one little chapel you may pace, with but 
half a dozen steps, across the graves of Charles the 
Second, William and Mary, and Queen Anne and her 
consort Prince George. At the tomb of Henry the 
Fifth you may see the helmet, shield, and saddle that 
were worn by the valiant young king at Agincourt ; 
and close by — on the tomb of Margaret Woodeville, 
daughter of Edward the Fourth — the sword and shield 
that were borne, in royal state, before the great Edward 
the Third, five hundred years ago. The princes who 
are said to have been murdered in the Tower are com- 
memorated here by an altar, set up by Charles the 
Second, whereon the inscription — blandly and almost 
humorously oblivious of the incident of Cromwell — 
states that it was erected in the thirtieth year of 
Charles's reign. Richard the Second, deposed and 
assassinated, is here entombed ; and within a few feet 



xi WESTMINSTER ABBEY 109 

of him are the relics of his uncle, the able and powerful 
Duke of Gloster, treacherously ensnared and betrayed 
to death. Here also, huge, rough, and gray, is the 
stone sarcophagus of Edward the First, which, when 
opened, in 1771, disclosed the skeleton of departed 
majesty, still perfect, wearing robes of gold tissue and 
crimson velvet, and having a crown on the head and a 
sceptre in the hand. So sleep, in jewelled darkness 
and gaudy decay, what once were monarchs ! And all 
around are great lords, holy prelates, famous statesmen, 
renowned soldiers, and illustrious poets. Burleigh, Pitt, 
Fox, Burke, Canning, Newton, Barrow, Wilberforce — 
names forever glorious ! — are here enshrined in the 
grandest sepulchre on earth. 

The interments that have been effected in and around 
the Abbey since the remote age of Edward the Con- 
fessor must number thousands ; but only about six 
hundred are named in the guide-books. In the south 
transept, which is Poets' Corner, rest Chaucer, Spenser, 
Drayton, Cowley, Dryden, Beaumont, Davenant, Prior, 
Gay, Congreve, Rowe, Dr. Johnson, Campbell, Macau- 
lay, and Dickens. Memorials to many other poets and 
writers have been ranged on the adjacent walls and 
pillars ; but these are among the authors that were 
actually buried in this place. Ben Jonson is not here, 
but — in an upright posture, it is said — under the 
north aisle of the Abbey ; Addison is in the chapel of 
Henry the Seventh, at the foot of the monument of 
Charles Montague, the great Earl of Halifax; and 
Bulwer is in the chapel of St. Edmund. Garrick, 
Sheridan, Henderson, Cumberland, Handel, Parr, Sir 
Archibald Campbell, and the once so mighty Duke of 



110 



SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 



Argyle are almost side by side ; while in St. Edward's 
chapel sleep Anne of Cleves, the divorced wife of 
Henry the Eighth, and Anne Neville, queen of Rich- 




I^SiSBP!^ 



Chapel of Edward the Confessor. 

ard the Third. Betterton and Spranger Barry are in 
the cloisters — where may be read, in four little words, 
the most touching epitaph in the Abbey : " Jane Lister 
— dear child." There are no monuments to either 
Byron, Shelley, Swift, Pope, Bolingbroke, Keats, Cow- 



xi WESTMINSTER ABBEY 111 

per, Moore, or Young ; but Mason and Shadwell are 
commemorated ; and Barton Booth is splendidly in- 
urned ; while hard by, in the cloisters, a place was 
found for Mrs. Cibber, Tom Brown, Anne Bracegirdle, 
Anne Oldfield, and Aphra Behn. The destinies have 
not always been stringently fastidious as to the admis- 
sion of lodgers to this sacred ground. The pilgrim is 
startled by some of the names that he finds in West- 
minster Abbey, and pained by reflection on the absence 
of some that he will seek in vain. Yet he will not fail 
to moralise, as he strolls in Poets' Corner, upon the 
inexorable justice with which time repudiates fictitious 
reputations and twines the laurel on only the worthiest 
brows. In well-nigh five hundred years of English 
literature there have lived only about a hundred and 
ten poets whose names survive in any needed chronicle ; 
and not all of those possess life outside of the library. 
To muse over the literary memorials in the Abbey is 
also to think upon the seeming caprice of chance with 
which the graves of the British poets have been 
scattered far and wide throughout the land. Gower, 
Fletcher, and Massinger (to name but a few of them) 
rest in Southwark ; Sydney and Donne in St. Paul's 
cathedral ; More (his head, that is, while his body 
moulders in the Tower chapel) at Canterbury ; Drum- 
mond in Lasswade church ; Dorset at Withyham, in 
Sussex ; Waller at Beaconsfield ; Wither, unmarked, in 
the church of the Savoy ; Milton in the church of the 
Cripplegate — where his relics, it is said, were despoiled ; 
Swift at Dublin, in St. Patrick's cathedral ; Young at 
Welwyn ; Pope at Twickenham ; Thomson at Rich- 
mond ; Gray at Stoke-Pogis ; Watts in Bunhill-Fields ; 



. i 



I, piilfcl ■ i 







The Poets' Comer. 



chap, xi WESTMINSTER ABBEY 113 

Collins in an obscure little church at Chichester — 
though his name is commemorated by a tablet in Chi- 
chester cathedral ; Cowper in Dereham church ; Gold- 
smith in the garden of the Temple ; Savage at Bristol ; 
Burns at Dumfries ; Rogers at Hornsey ; Crabbe at 
Trowbridge ; Scott in Dryburgh abbey ; Coleridge at 
Highgate ; Byron in Hucknall church, near Notting- 
ham ; Moore at Bromham ; Montgomery at Sheffield ; 
Heber at Calcutta ; Southey in Crossthwaite church- 
yard, near Keswick; Wordsworth and Hartley Cole- 
ridge side by side in the churchyard of Grasmere ; and 
Clough at Florence — whose lovely words may here 
speak for all of them — 

" One port, methought, alike they sought, 
One purpose held, where'er they fare : 
O bounding breeze, O rushing seas, 
At last, at last, unite them there ! " 

But it is not alone in the great Abbey that the 
rambler in London is impressed by poetic antiquity and 
touching historic association — always presuming that 
he has been a reader of English literature and that his 
reading has sunk into his mind. Little things, equally 
with great ones, commingled in a medley, luxuriant and 
delicious, so people the memory of such a pilgrim that 
all his walks will be haunted. The London of to-day, 
to be sure (as may be seen in Macaulay's famous third 
chapter, and in Scott's Fortunes of Nigel), is very little 
like even the London of Charles the Second, when the 
great fire had destroyed eighty-nine churches and thir- 
teen thousand houses, and when what is now Regent 
Street was a rural solitude in which sportsmen some- 
times shot the woodcock. Yet, though much of the 




The North Ambulatory, 



■*>= 



chap, xi WESTMINSTER ABBEY 115 

old capital has vanished and more of it has been 
changed, many remnants of its historic past exist, and 
many of its streets and houses are fraught with a 
delightful, romantic interest. It is not forgotten that 
sometimes the charm resides in the eyes that see, quite 
as much as in the object that is seen. The storied 
spots of London may not be appreciable by all who 
look upon them every day. The cab-drivers in the 
region of Kensington Palace Road may neither regard, 
nor even notice, the house in which Thackeray lived 
and died. The shop-keepers of old Bond Street may, 
perhaps, neither care nor know that in this famous 
avenue was enacted the woful death-scene of Laurence 
Sterne. The Bow Street runners are quite unlikely to 
think of Will's Coffee House, and Dryden, or Button's, 
and Addison, as they pass the sites of those vanished 
haunts of wit and revelry in the days of Queen Anne. 
The fashionable lounger through Berkeley Square, 
when perchance he pauses at the corner of Bruton 
Street, will not discern Colley Cibber, in wig and 
ruffles, standing at the parlour window and drumming 
with his hands on the frame. The casual passenger, 
halting at the Tavistock, will not remember that this 
was once Macklin's Ordinary, and so conjure up the 
iron visage and ferocious aspect of the first great 
Shylock of the British stage, formally obsequious to 
his guests, or striving to edify them, despite the ban- 
ter of the volatile Foote, with discourse upon " the 
Causes of Duelling in Ireland." The Barbican does 
not to every one summon the austere memory of Mil- 
ton ; nor Holborn raise the melancholy shade of Chat- 
terton ; nor Tower Hill arouse the gloomy ghost of 



116 



SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 



Otway ; nor Hampstead lure forth the sunny figure of 
Steele and the passionate face of Keats ; nor old Nor- 
thumberland Street suggest the burly presence of "rare 
Ben Jonson"; nor opulent Kensington revive the stately 
head of Addison ; nor a certain window in Wellington 




Street reveal in fancy's 
picture the rugged lin- 
eaments and splendid 
eyes of Dickens. Yet 
London never disappoints ; and for him who knows 
and feels its history these associations, and hundreds 
like to these, make it populous with noble or strange 
or pathetic figures, and diversify the aspect of its vital 
present with pictures of an equally vital past. Such a 
wanderer discovers that in this vast capital there is 
literally no end to the themes that are to stir his imagi- 



xi WESTMINSTER ABBEY 117 

nation, touch his heart, and broaden his mind. Soothed 
already by the equable English climate and the lovely 
English scenery, he is aware now of an influence in 
the solid English city that turns his intellectual life to 
perfect tranquillity. He stands amid achievements that 
are finished, careers that are consummated, great deeds 
that are clone, great memories that are immortal ; he 
views and comprehends the sum of all that is possible 
to human thought, passion, and labour ; and then, — 
high over mighty London, above the dome of St. Paul's 
cathedral, piercing the clouds, greeting the sun, drawing 
into itself all the tremendous life of the great city and 
all the meaning of its past and present, — the golden 
cross of Christ ! 




CHAPTER XII 



SHAKESPEARE S HOME 




T is the everlasting glory of Stratford- 
upon-Avon that it was the birthplace of 
Shakespeare. Situated in the heart of 
Warwickshire, which has been called " the 
garden of England," it nestles cosily in an 
atmosphere of tranquil loveliness and is surrounded 
with everything that soft and gentle rural scenery can 
provide to soothe the mind and to nurture contentment. 
It stands upon a plain, almost in the centre of the 
island, through which, between the low green hills that 
roll away on either side, the Avon flows downward to 
the Severn. The country in its neighbourhood is under 
perfect cultivation, and for many miles around presents 
the appearance of a superbly appointed park. Portions 
of the land are devoted to crops and pasture ; other 
portions are thickly wooded with oak, elm, willow, and 
chestnut ; the meadows are intersected by hedges of 
fragrant hawthorn, and the region smiles with flowers. 
Old manor-houses, half-hidden among the trees, and 
thatched cottages embowered with roses are sprinkled 

118 



CHAP. XII 



SHAKESPEARE'S HOME 



119 



through the surrounding landscape ; and all the roads 
that converge upon this point — from Birmingham, 
Warwick, Shipton, Bidford, Alcester, Evesham, Worces- 




ter, and other contiguous towns — wind, in sun and 
shadow, through a sod of green velvet, swept by the 
cool, sweet winds of the English summer. Such felici- 
ties of situation and such accessories of beauty, how- 



120 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

ever, are not unusual in England; and Stratford, were 
it not hallowed by association, though it would always 
hold a place among the pleasant memories of the 
traveller, would not have become a shrine for the 
homage of the world. To Shakespeare it owes its 
renown ; from Shakespeare it derives the bulk of its 
prosperity. To visit Stratford is to tread with affec- 
tionate veneration in the footsteps of the poet. To 
write about Stratford is to write about Shakespeare. 

More than three hundred years have passed since 
the birth of that colossal genius and many changes 
have occurred in his native town within that period. 
The Stratford of Shakespeare's time was built prin- 
cipally of timber, and it contained about fourteen hun- 
dred inhabitants. To-day its population numbers more 
than eight thousand. New dwellings have arisen where 
once were fields of wheat, glorious with the shimmer- 
ing lustre of the scarlet poppy. Many of the older 
buildings have been altered. Manufacture has been 
stimulated into prosperous activity. The Avon has 
been spanned by a new bridge, of iron — a path for 
pedestrians, adjacent to Clopton's bridge of stone. 
(The iron bridge was opened November 23, 1827. The 
Clopton Bridge was 376 yards long and about 16 yards 
wide. Alterations of the west end of it were made in 
1 8 14.) The streets have been levelled, swept, rolled 
and garnished till they look like a Flemish drawing, of 
the Middle Ages. Even the Shakespeare cottage, the 
old Harvard house in High Street, and the two old 
churches — authentic and splendid memorials of a dis- 
tant and storied past — have been "restored." If the 
poet could walk again through his accustomed haunts, 



xii SHAKESPEARE'S HOME 121 

though he would see the same smiling country round 
about, and hear, as of old, the ripple of the Avon 
murmuring in its summer sleep, his eyes would rest on 
but few objects that once he knew. Yet, there are the 
paths that Shakespeare often trod ; there stands the 
house in which he was born ; there is the school in 
which he was taught ; there is the cottage in which he 
wooed his sweetheart ; there are the traces and relics of 
the mansion in which he died ; and there is the church 
that keeps his dust, so consecrated by the reverence of 
mankind 

" That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.' 1 

In shape the town of Stratford somewhat resembles 
a large cross, which is formed by High Street, running 
nearly north and south, and Bridge Street and Wood 
Street, running nearly east and west. From these, 
which are main avenues, radiate many and devious 
branches. A few of the streets are broad and straight 
but many of them are narrow and crooked. High and 
Bridge streets intersect each other at the centre of the 
town, and there stands the market house, an ugly 
building, of the period of George the Fourth, with 
belfry and illuminated clock, facing eastward toward 
the old stone bridge, with fourteen arches, — the bridge 
that Sir Hugh Clopton built across the Avon, in the 
reign of Henry the Seventh. A cross once stood at 
the corner of High Street, and Wood Street, and near 
the cross was a pump and a well. From that central 
point a few steps will bring the traveller to the birth- 
place of Shakespeare. It is a little, two-story cottage, 
of timber and plaster, on the north side of Henley 



chap, xii SHAKESPEARE'S HOME 123 

Street, in the western part of the town. It must have 
been, in its pristine days, finer than most of the 
dwellings in its neighbourhood. The one-story house, 
with attic windows, was the almost invariable fashion 
of building, in English country towns, till the seven- 
teenth century. This cottage, besides its two stories, 
had dormer-windows, a pent-house over its door, and 
altogether was built and appointed in a manner both 
luxurious and substantial. Its age is unknown ; but 
the history of Stratford reaches back to a period three 
hundred years antecedent to William the Conqueror, 
and fancy, therefore, is allowed ample room to magnify 
its antiquity. It was bought, or occupied, by Shake- 
speare's father in 1555, and in it he resided till his 
death, in 1601, when it descended by inheritance to the 
poet. Such is the substance of the complex documen- 
tary evidence and of the emphatic tradition that conse- 
crate this cottage as the house in which Shakespeare 
was born. The point has never been absolutely settled. 
John Shakespeare, the father, was the owner in 1564 
not only of the house in Henley Street but of another 
in Greenhill Street. William Shakespeare might have 
been born at either of those dwellings. Tradition, how- 
ever, has sanctified the Henley Street cottage ; and this, 
accordingly, as Shakespeare's cradle, will be piously 
guarded to a late posterity. 

It has already survived serious perils and vicissitudes. 
By Shakespeare's will it was bequeathed to his sister 
Joan — Mrs. William Hart — -to be held by her, under 
the yearly rent of twelvepence, during her life, and at 
her death to revert to his daughter Susanna and her 
descendants. His sister Joan appears to have been 



124 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

living there at the time of his decease, in 1616. She is 
known to have been living there in 1639 — twenty-three 
years later, — and doubtless she resided there till her 
death, in 1646. The estate then passed to Susanna — 
Mrs. John Hall, — from whom in 1649 it descended to 
her grandchild, Lady Barnard, who left it to her kins- 
men, Thomas and George Hart, grandsons of Joan. In 
this line of descent it continued — subject to many of 
those infringements which are incidental to poverty — 
till 1806, when William Shakespeare Hart, the seventh 
in collateral kinship from the poet, sold it to Thomas 
Court, from whose family it was at last purchased for 
the British nation. Meantime the property, which 
originally consisted of two tenements and a consider- 
able tract of adjacent land, had, little by little, been 
curtailed of its fair proportions by the sale of its gardens 
and orchards. The two tenements — two in one, that 
is — had been subdivided. A part of the building 
became an inn — at first called "The Maidenhead," 
afterward " The Swan," and finally " The Swan and 
Maidenhead." Another part became a butcher's shop. 
The old dormer-windows and the pent-house disap- 
peared. A new brick casing was foisted upon the 
tavern end of the structure. In front of the butcher's 
shop appeared a sign announcing " William Shakespeare 
was born in this house: N.B. — A Horse and Taxed 
Cart to Let." Still later appeared another legend, 
vouching that " the immortal Shakespeare was born in 
this house." From 1793 till 1820 Thomas and Mary 
Hornby, connections by marriage with the Harts, lived 
in the Shakespeare cottage — now at length become 
the resort of literary pilgrims, — and Mary Hornby, 



xii SHAKESPEARE'S HOME 125 

who set up to be a poet and wrote tragedy, comedy, 
and philosophy, took delight in exhibiting its rooms to 
visitors. During the reign of that eccentric custodian 
the low ceilings and whitewashed walls of its several 
chambers became covered with autographs, scrawled 
thereon by many enthusiasts, including some of the 
most famous persons in Europe. In 1820 Mary Hornby 
was requested to leave the premises. She did not wish 
to go. She could not endure the thought of a successor. 
" After me, the deluge ! " She was obliged to abdicate ; 
but she conveyed away all the furniture and relics al- 
leged to be connected with Shakespeare's family, and 
she hastily whitewashed the cottage walls. Only a 
small part of the wall of the upper room, the chamber 
in which " nature's darling " first saw the light, escaped 
that act of spiteful sacrilege. On. the space behind its 
door may still be read many names, with dates affixed, 
ranging back from 1820 to 1729. Among them is that 
of Dora Jordan, the beautiful and fascinating actress, 
who wrote it there June 2, 1809. Much of Mary 
Hornby's whitewash, which chanced to be unsized, was 
afterward removed, so that her work of obliteration 
proved only in part successful. Other names have 
been added to this singular, chaotic scroll of worship. 
Byron, Scott, * Rogers, Thackeray, Kean, Tennyson, 
and Dickens are among the votaries there and thus 
recorded. The successors of Mary Hornby guarded 

1 Sir Walter Scott visited Shakespeare's birthplace in August, 1821, and 
at that time scratched his name on the window-pane. He had previously, 
in 1 81 5, visited Kenilworth. He was in Stratford again in 1828, and on 
April 8 he went to Shakespeare's grave, and subsequently drove to Charle- 
cote. The visit of Lord Byron has been incorrectly assigned to the year 
1 81 6. It occurred on August 28, possibly in 181 2. 



126 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

their charge with pious care. The precious value of 
the old Shakespeare cottage grew more and more 
evident to the English people. Washington Irving 
made his pilgrimage to Stratford and recounted it in his 
beautiful SkctcJi-Book. Yet it was not till P. T. Barnum, 
from the United States, arrived with a proposition to 
buy the Shakespeare house and convey it to America 
that the literary enthusiasm of Great Britain was made 
to take a practical shape, and this venerated and in- 
estimable relic became, in 1847, a national possession. 
In 1856 John Shakespeare, of Worthington Field, near 
Ashby-de-la-Zouche, gave a large sum of money to 
restore it ; and within the next two years, under the 
superintendence of Edward Gibbs and William Holtom 
of Stratford, it was isolated by the demolition of the 
cottages at its sides and in the rear, repaired wherever 
decay was visible, and set in perfect order. 

The builders of this house must have done their work 
thoroughly well, for even after all these years of rough 
usage and of slow but incessant decline the great tim- 
bers remain solid, the plastered walls are firm, the huge 
chimney-stack is as permanent as a rock, and the ancient 
flooring only betrays by the channelled aspect of its 
boards, and the high polish on the heads of the nails 
which fasten them down, that it belongs to a period of 
remote antiquity. The cottage stands close upon the mar- 
gin of the street, according to ancient custom of build- 
ing throughout Stratford ; and, entering through a little 
porch, the pilgrim stands at once in that low-ceiled, flag- 
stoned room, with its wide fire-place, so familiar in prints 
of the chimney-corner of Shakespeare's youthful days. 
Within the fire-place, on either side, is a seat fashioned 



xii SHAKESPEARE'S HOME 127 

in the brick-work ; and here, as it is pleasant to imagine, 
the boy-poet often sat, on winter nights, gazing dreamily 
into the flames, and building castles in that fairyland of 
fancy which was his celestial inheritance. You pres- 
ently pass from this room by a narrow, well-worn stair- 
case to the chamber above, which is shown as the place 
of the poet's birth. An antiquated chair, of the sixteenth 
century, stands in the right-hand corner. At the left is 
a small fire-place. Around the walls are visible the 
great beams which are the framework of the build- 
ing — beams of seasoned oak that will last forever. 
Opposite to the door of entrance is a threefold case- 
ment (the original window) full of narrow panes of 
glass scrawled all over with names that their worship- 
ful owners have written with diamonds. The ceiling is 
so low that you can easily touch it with uplifted hand. 
A portion of it is held in place by a network of little 
iron laths. This room, and indeed the whole structure, 
is as polished and orderly as any waxen, royal hall in 
the Louvre, and it impresses observation much like old 
lace that has been treasured up, in lavender or jasmine. 
These walls, which no one is now permitted to mar, 
were naturally the favourite scroll of the Shakespeare 
votaries of long ago. Every inch of the plaster bears 
marks of the pencil of reverence. Hundreds of names 
are written there — some of them famous but most of 
them obscure, and all destined to perish where they 
stand. On the chimney-piece at the right of the fire- 
place, which is named The Actor's Pillar, many actors 
have inscribed their signatures. Edmund Kean wrote 
his name there — with what soulful veneration and 
spiritual sympathy it is awful even to try to imagine. 



128 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

Sir Walter Scott's name is scratched with a diamond on 
the window — " W. Scott." That of Thackeray appears 
on the ceiling, and upon the beam across the centre is 
that of Helen Faucit. The name of Eliza Vestris is 
written near the fireplace. Mark Lemon and Charles 
Dickens are together on the opposite wall. Byron 
wrote his name there, but it has disappeared. The list 
would include, among others, Elliston, Buckstone, G. V. 
Brooke, Charles Kean, Charles Mathews, and Fanny Fitz- 
william. But it is not of these offerings of fealty that 
you think when you sit and muse alone in that myste- 
rious chamber. As once again I conjure up that strange 
and solemn scene, the sunshine rests in checkered 
squares upon the ancient floor,' the motes swim in the 
sunbeams, the air is very cold, the place is hushed as 
death, and over it all there broods an atmosphere of 
grave suspense and mystical desolation — a sense of 
some tremendous energy stricken dumb and frozen into 
silence and past and gone forever. 

Opposite to the birthchamber, at the rear, there is a 
small apartment, in which is displayed " the Stratford 
Portrait" of the poet. This painting is said to have 
been owned by the Clopton family, and to have fallen 
into the hands of William Hunt, town clerk of Strat- 
ford, who bought the mansion of the Cloptons in 1758. 
The adventures through which it passed can only be 
conjectured. It does not appear to have been valued, 
and although it remained in the house it was cast away 
among lumber and rubbish. In process of time it was 
painted over and changed into a different subject. Then 
it fell a prey to dirt and damp. There is a story that 
the little boys of the tribe of Hunt were accustomed to 



xii SHAKESPEARE'S HOME 129 

use it as a target for their arrows. At last, after the 
lapse of a century, the grandson of William Hunt 
showed it by chance to Simon Collins, an artist, who 
surmised that a valuable portrait might perhaps exist 
beneath its muddy surface. It was carefully cleaned. 
A thick beard was removed, and the face of Shakespeare 
emerged upon the canvas. It is not pretended that this 
portrait was painted in Shakespeare's time. The close 
resemblance that it bears, — in attitude, dress, colours, 
and other peculiarities, — to the painted bust of the 
poet in Stratford church seems to indicate that it is a 
modern copy of that work. Upon a brass plate affixed 
to it is the following inscription : " This portrait of 
Shakespeare, after being in the possession of Mr. William 
Oakes Hunt, town-clerk of Stratford, and his family, for 
upwards of a century, was restored to its original condi- 
tion by Mr. Simon Collins of London, and, being con- 
sidered a portrait of much interest and value, was given 
by Mr. Hunt to the town of Stratford-upon-Avon, to be 
preserved in Shakespeare's house, 23d April, 1862." 
There, accordingly, it remains, and, in association with 
several other dubious presentments of the poet, cheer- 
fully adds to the mental confusion of the pilgrim who 
would form an accurate image of Shakespeare's appear- 
ance. Standing in its presence it was worth while to 
reflect that there are only two authentic representations 
of Shakespeare in existence — the Droeshout portrait 
and the Gerard Jonson bust. They may not be perfect 
works of art ; they may not do justice to the original ; 
but they were seen and accepted by persons to whom 
Shakespeare had been a living companion. The bust 
was sanctioned by his children ; the portrait was sane- 



130 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

tioned by his friend Ben Jonson, and by his brother 
actors Heminge and Condell, who prefixed it, in 1623, to 
the first folio of his works. Standing among the relics 
that have been gathered into a museum in an apartment 
on the ground-floor of the cottage it was essential also 
to remember how often " the wish is father to the 
thought" that sanctifies the uncertain memorials of the 
distant past. Several of the most suggestive documents, 
though, which bear upon the sparse and shadowy record 
of Shakespeare's life are preserved in this place. Here 
is a deed, made in 1596, which proves that this house 
was his father's residence. Here is the only letter 
addressed to him that is known to exist — the letter of 
Richard Quiney (1598) asking for the loan of thirty 
pounds. Here is a declaration in a suit, in 1604, to re- 
cover the price of some malt that he had sold to Philip 
Rogers. Here is a deed, dated 1609, on which is the 
autograph of his brother Gilbert, who represented him, 
at Stratford, in his business affairs, while he was absent 
in London, and who, surviving, it is dubiously said, al- 
most till the period of the Restoration, talked, as a very 
old man, of the poet's impersonation of Adam in As 
You Like It. (Possibly the reference of that legend is 
not to Gilbert but to a son of his. Gilbert would have 
been nearly a century old when Charles the Second 
came to the throne.) Here likewise is shown a gold 
seal ring, found many years ago in a field near Stratford 
church, on which, delicately engraved, appear the letters 
W. S., entwined with a true lovers' knot. It may have 
belonged to Shakespeare. The conjecture is that it did, 
and that, — since on the last of the three sheets which 
contain his will the word " seal" is stricken out and the 



xii SHAKESPEARE'S HOME 131 

word "hand" substituted, — he did not seal that docu- 
ment because he had only just then lost this ring. The 
supposition is, at least, ingenious. It will not harm the 
visitor to accept it. Nor, as he stands poring over the 
ancient, decrepit school-desk which has been lodged in 
this museum, from the grammar-school, will it greatly 
tax his credulity to believe that the " shining morning 
face " of the boy Shakespeare once looked down upon 
it, in the irksome quest of his " small Latin and less 
Greek." They call it Shakespeare's desk. It is old, 
and it is known to have been in the school of the guild 
three hundred years ago. There are other relics, more 
or less indirectly connected with the great name that is 
here commemorated. The inspection of them all would 
consume many days ; the description of them would 
occupy many pages. You write your name in the visi- 
tors' book at parting, and perhaps stroll forth into the 
garden of the cottage, which encloses it at the sides and 
in the rear, and there, beneath the leafy boughs of the 
English lime, while your footsteps press " the grassy 
carpet of this plain," behold growing all around you 
the rosemary, pansies, fennel, columbines, rue, daisies, 
and violets, which make the imperishable garland on 
Ophelia's grave, and which are the fragrance of her 
solemn and lovely memory. 

Thousands of times the wonder must have been ex- 
pressed that while the world knows so much about 
Shakespeare's mind it should know so little about his 
life. The date of his birth, even, is established by an 
inference. The register of Stratford church shows that 
he was baptised there in 1564, on April 26. It was 
customary to baptise infants on the third day after their 



132 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

birth. It is presumed that the custom was followed in 
this instance, and hence it is deduced that Shakespeare 
was born on April 23 — a date which, making allow- 
ance for the difference between the old and new styles 
of reckoning time, corresponds to our third of May. 
Equally by an inference it is established that the boy 
was educated in the free grammar-school. The school 
was there ; and any boy of the town, who was seven 
years old and able to read, could get admission to it. 
Shakespeare's father, an alderman of Stratford (elected 
chief alderman, October 10, 1 5 7 1 ), and then a man of 
worldly substance, though afterward he became poor, 
would surely have wished that his children should grow 
up in knowledge. To the ancient school-house, accord- 
ingly, and the adjacent chapel of the guild — which are 
still extant, at the south-east corner of Chapel Lane 
and Church Street — the pilgrim confidently traces the 
footsteps of the poet. Those buildings are of singular, 
picturesque quaintness. The chapel dates back to 
about the middle of the thirteenth century. It was a 
Roman Catholic institution, founded in 1296, under the 
patronage of the Bishop of Worcester, and committed 
to the pious custody of the guild of Stratford. A hos- 
pital was connected with it in those days, and Robert 
de Stratford was its first master. New privileges and 
confirmation were granted to the guild by Henry the 
Sixth, in 1403 and 1429. The grammar-school, estab- 
lished on an endowment of lands and tenements by 
Thomas Jolyffe, was set up in association with it in 
1482. Toward the end of the reign of Henry the 
Seventh the whole of the chapel, excepting the chancel, 
was torn down and rebuilt under the munificent direc- 



xii SHAKESPEARE'S HOME 133 

tion of Sir Hugh Clopton, Lord Mayor of London and 
Stratford's chief citizen and benefactor. Under Henry 
the Eighth, when came the stormy times of the Refor- 
mation, the priests were driven out, the guild was dis- 
solved, and the chapel was despoiled. Edward the 
Sixth, however, granted a new charter to this ancient 
institution, and with especial precautions reinstated the 
school. The chapel itself was occasionally used as a 
schoolroom when Shakespeare was a boy, and until as 
late as the year 1 595 ; and in case the lad did go thither 
(in 1 571) as a pupil, he must have been from childhood 
familiar with the series of grotesque paintings upon its 
walls, presenting, in a pictorial panorama, the history 
of the Holy Cross, from its origin as a tree at the be- 
ginning of the world to its exaltation at Jerusalem. 
Those paintings were brought to light in 1804 in the 
course of a renovation of the chapel which then occurred, 
when the walls were relieved of thick coatings of white- 
wash, laid on them long before, in Puritan times, either 
to spoil or to hide from the spoiler. They are not visi- 
ble now, but they were copied and have been engraved. 
The drawings of them, by Fisher, are in the collection 
of Shakespearean Rarities made by J. O. Halliwell- 
Phillipps. This chapel and its contents constitute one 
of the few remaining spectacles at Stratford that bring 
us face to face with Shakespeare. During the last 
seven years of his life he dwelt almost continually in 
his house of New Place, on the corner immediately 
opposite to this church. The configuration of the 
excavated foundations of that house indicates what 
would now be called a deep bay-window in its southern 
front. There, probably, was Shakespeare's study ; and 



134 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

through that casement, many and many a time, in 
storm and in sunshine, by night and by day, he must 
have looked out upon the grim, square tower, the 
embattled stone wall, and the four tall Gothic windows 
of that mysterious temple. The moment your gaze 
falls upon it, the low-breathed, horror-stricken words 
of Lady Macbeth murmur in your memory : — 

" The raven himself is hoarse 
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan 
Under my battlements." 

New Place, Shakespeare's home at the time of his 
death and the house in which he died, stood on the 
north-east corner of Chapel Street and Chapel Lane. 
Nothing now remains of it but a portion of its foun- 
dations — long buried in the earth, but found and 
exhumed in comparatively recent days. Its gardens 
have been redeemed, through the zealous and devoted 
exertions of J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps and have been 
restored to what is thought to have been almost their 
condition when Shakespeare owned them. The crum- 
bling fragments of the foundation are covered with 
screens of wood and wire. A mulberry-tree, a scion of 
the famous mulberry that Shakespeare is known to 
have planted, is growing on the lawn. There is no 
authentic picture in existence that shows New Place as 
it was when Shakespeare left it, but there is a sketch 
of it as it appeared in 1740. The house was made of 
brick and timber, and was built by Sir Hugh Clopton 
nearly a century before it became by purchase the 
property of the poet. Shakespeare bought it in 1597, 
and in it he passed, intermittently, a considerable part 



xii SHAKESPEARE'S HOME 135 

of the last nineteen years of his life. It had borne the 
name of New Place before it came into his possession. 
The Clopton family parted with it in 1563, and it was 
subsequently owned by families of Bott and Underhill. 
At Shakespeare's death it was inherited by his eldest 
daughter, Susanna, wife of Dr. John Hall. In 1643, 
Mrs. Hall, then seven years a widow, being still its 
owner and occupant, Henrietta Maria, queen to Charles 
the First, who had come to Stratford with a part of the 
royal army, resided for three days at New Place, which, 
therefore, must even then have been the most consider- 
able private residence in the town. (The queen arrived 
at Stratford on July 11 and on July 13 she went to 
Kineton.) Mrs. Hall, dying in 1649, aged sixty-six, 
left it to her only child, Elizabeth, then Mrs. Thomas 
Nashe, who afterward became Lady Barnard, wife to 
Sir John Barnard, of Abingdon, and in whom the direct 
line of Shakespeare ended. After her death the estate 
was purchased by Sir Edward Walker, in 1675, who 
ultimately left it to his daughter's husband, Sir John 
Clopton (1638-1719), and so it once more passed into 
the hands of the family of its founder. A second Sir 
Hugh Clopton (1671-1751) owned it at the middle of 
the eighteenth century, and under his direction it was 
repaired, decorated, and furnished with a new front. 
That proved the beginning of the end of this old 
structure, as a relic of Shakespeare ; for this owner, 
dying in 175 1, bequeathed it to his son-in-law, Henry 
Talbot, who in 1753 sold it to the most universally 
execrated iconoclast of modern times, the Rev. Francis 
Gastrell, vicar of Frodsham, in Cheshire, by whom it 
was destroyed. Mr. Gastrell was a man of fortune, 



136 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

and he certainly was one of insensibility. He knew 
little of Shakespeare ; but he knew that the frequent 
incursion, into his garden, of strangers who came to sit 
beneath " Shakespeare's mulberry " was a troublesome 
annoyance. He struck, therefore, at the root of the 
vexation and cut down the tree. That was in 1756. 
The wood was purchased by Thomas Sharp, a watch- 
maker of Stratford, who subsequently made the solemn 
declaration that he carried it to his home and converted 
it into toys and kindred memorial relics. The villagers 
of Stratford, meantime, incensed at the barbarity of Mr. 
Gastrell, took their revenge by breaking his windows. 
In this and in other ways the clergyman was probably 
made to realise his local unpopularity. It had been his 
custom to reside during a part of each year in Lichfield, 
leaving some of his servants in charge of New Place. 
The overseers of Stratford, having lawful authority to 
levy a tax, for the maintenance of the poor, on every 
house in the town valued at more than forty shillings a 
year, did not neglect to make a vigorous use of their 
privilege in the case of Mr. Gastrell. The result of 
their exactions in the sacred cause of charity was 
significant. In 1759 Mr. Gastrell declared that the 
house should never be taxed again, pulled down the 
building, sold the materials of which it had been 
composed, and left Stratford forever. He repaired to 
Lichfield and there died. In the house adjacent to the 
site of what was once Shakespeare's home has been 
established a museum of Shakespearean relics. Among 
them is a stone mullion, found on the site, which may 
have belonged to a window of the original mansion. 
This estate, bought from different owners and restored 



xii SHAKESPEARE'S HOME 137 

to its Shakespearean condition, became on April 17, 
1876, the property of the corporation of Stratford. 
The tract of land is not large. The visitor may traverse 
the whole of it in a few minutes, although if he obey 
his inclination he will linger there for hours. The 
enclosure is an irregular rectangle, about two hundred 
feet long. The lawn is perfect. The mulberry is 
extant and tenacious, and wears its honours in con- 
tented vigour. Other trees give grateful shade to the 
grounds, and the voluptuous red roses, growing all 
around in rich profusion, load the air with fragrance. 
Eastward, at a little distance, flows the Avon. Not far 
away rises the graceful spire of the Holy Trinity. A 
few rooks, hovering in the air and wisely bent on some 
facetious mischief, send down through the silver haze 
of the summer morning their sagacious yet melancholy 
caw. The windows of the gray chapel across the street 
twinkle, and keep their solemn secret. On this spot 
was first waved the mystic wand of Prospero. Here 
Ariel sang of dead men's bones turned into pearl and 
coral in the deep caverns of the sea. Here arose into 
everlasting life Hermione, " as tender as infancy and 
grace." Here were created Miranda and Perdita, twins 
of heaven's own radiant goodness, — 

" Daffodils 
That come before the swallow dares, and take 
The winds of March with beauty ; violets dim, 
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes 
Or Cytherea's breath. 11 

To endeavour to touch upon the larger and more 
august aspect of Shakespeare's life — when, as his 
wonderful sonnets betray, his great heart had felt the 



138 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap, xii 

devastating blast of cruel passions and the deepest 
knowledge of the good and evil of the universe had 
been borne in upon his soul — would be impious pre- 
sumption. Happily to the stroller in Stratford every 
association connected with him is gentle and tender. 
His image, as it rises there, is of smiling boyhood or 
sedate and benignant maturity; always either joyous or 
serene, never passionate, or turbulent, or dark. The 
pilgrim thinks of him as a happy child at his father's 
fireside ; as a wondering school-boy in the quiet, vener- 
able close of the old guild chapel, where still the only 
sound that breaks the silence is the chirp of birds or 
the creaking of the church vane ; as a handsome, daunt- 
less youth, sporting by his beloved river or roaming 
through field and forest many miles around ; as the 
bold, adventurous spirit, bent on frolic and mischief, 
and not averse to danger, leading, perhaps, the wild 
lads of his village in their poaching depredations on 
the chace of Charlecote ; as the lover, strolling through 
the green lanes of Shottery, hand in hand with the 
darling of his first love, while round them the honey- 
suckle breathed out its fragrant heart upon the winds 
of night, and overhead the moonlight, streaming 
through rifts of elm and poplar, fell on their pathway 
in showers of shimmering silver ; and, last of all, as the 
illustrious poet, rooted and secure in his massive and 
shining fame, loved by many, and venerated and 
mourned by all, borne slowly through Stratford church- 
yard, while the golden bells were tolled in sorrow and 
the mourning lime-trees dropped their blossoms on his 
bier, to the place of his eternal rest. Through all the 
scenes incidental to this experience the worshipper of 



140 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

Shakespeare's genius may follow him every step of the 
way. The old foot-path across the fields to Shottery 
remains accessible. Wild-flowers are blooming along 
its margin. The gardens and meadows through which 
it winds are sprinkled with the gorgeous scarlet of the 
poppy. The hamlet of Shottery is less than a mile 
from Stratford, stepping toward the sunset ; and there, 
nestled beneath the elms, and almost embowered in 
vines and roses, stands the cottage in which Anne 
Hathaway was wooed and won. This is even more 
antiquated in appearance than the birthplace of Shake- 
speare, and more obviously a relic of the distant past. 
It is built of wood and plaster, ribbed with massive 
timbers, and covered with a thatch roof. It fronts 
southward, presenting its eastern end to the road. 
Under its eaves, peeping through embrasures cut in 
the thatch, are four tiny casements, round which the 
ivy twines and the roses wave softly in the wind of 
June. The western end of the structure is higher than 
the eastern, and the old building, originally divided into 
two tenements, is now divided into three. In front of 
it is a straggling garden. There is a comfortable air of 
wildness, yet not of neglect, in its appointments and 
surroundings. The place is still the abode of labour 
and lowliness. Entering its parlour you see a stone 
floor, a wide fireplace, a broad, hospitable hearth, with 
cosy chimney-corners, and near this an old wooden 
settle, much decayed but still serviceable, on which 
Shakespeare may often have sat, with Anne at his side. 
The plastered walls of this room here and there reveal 
portions of an oak wainscot. The ceiling is low. This 
evidently was the farm-house of a substantial yeoman, 



xii SHAKESPEARE'S HOME 141 

in the days of Henry the Eighth. The Hathaways had 
lived in Shottery for forty years prior to Shakespeare's 
marriage. The poet, then undistinguished, had just 
turned eighteen, while his bride was nearly twenty-six, 
and it has been foolishly said that she acted ill in wed- 
ding her boy-lover. They were married in November, 
1582, and their first child, Susanna, came in the follow- 
ing May. Anne Hathaway must have been a wonder- 
fully fascinating woman, or Shakespeare would not so 
have loved her; and she must have loved him dearly — 
as what woman, indeed, could help it ? — or she would 
not thus have yielded to his passion. There is direct 
testimony to the beauty of his person ; and in the light 
afforded by his writings it requires no extraordinary 
penetration to conjecture that his brilliant mind, spark- 
ling humour, tender fancy, and impetuous spirit must 
have made him, in his youth, a paragon of enchanters. 
It is not known where they lived during the first years 
after their marriage. Perhaps in this cottage at Shot- 
tery. Perhaps with Hamnet and Judith Sadler, for 
whom their twins, born in 1585, were named Hamnet 
and Judith. Her father's house assuredly would have 
been chosen for Anne's refuge, when presently (in 1585 
-86), Shakespeare was obliged to leave his wife and 
children, and go away to London to seek his fortune. 
He did not buy New Place till 1597, but it is known 
that in the meantime he came to his native town once 
every year. It was in Stratford that his son Hamnet 
died, in 1596. Anne and her children probably had 
never left the town. They show a bedstead and other 
bits of furniture, together with certain homespun sheets 
of everlasting linen, that are kept as heirlooms in the 



142 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap, xii 

garret of the Shottery cottage. Here is the room that 
may often have welcomed the poet when he came home 
from his labours in the great city. It is a homely and 
humble place, but the sight of it makes the heart thrill 
with a strange and incommunicable awe. You cannot 
wish to speak when you are standing there. You are 
scarcely conscious of the low rustling of the leaves out- 
side, the far-off sleepy murmur of the brook, or the 
faint fragrance of woodbine and maiden's-blush that is 
wafted in at the open casement and that swathes in 
nature's incense a memory sweeter than itself. 

Associations may be established by fable as well as 
by fact. There is but little reason to believe the legen- 
dary tale, first recorded by Rowe, that Shakespeare, 
having robbed the deer-park of Sir Thomas Lucy of 
Charlecote (there was not a park at Charlecote then, 
but there was one at Fullbrooke), was so severely 
persecuted by that magistrate that he was compelled to 
quit Stratford and shelter himself in London. Yet the 
story has twisted itself into all the lives of Shakespeare, 
and whether received or rejected has clung to the house 
of Charlecote. That noble mansion — a genuine speci- 
men, despite a few modern alterations, of the architec- 
ture of Queen Elizabeth's time — is found on the west 
bank of the Avon, about three miles north-east from 
Stratford. It is a long, rambling, three-storied palace 

— as finely quaint as old St. James's in London, and 
not altogether unlike that edifice, in general character 

— with octagon turrets, gables, balustrades, Tudor case- 
ments, and great stacks of chimneys, so closed in by 
elms of giant growth that you can scarce distinguish it, 
through the foliage, till you are close upon it. It was 




' ' ; '• III 7- — — ~ -* • *■ JM'^'^ff ,%^^^-' 



~6 



Charlecote. 



144 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

erected in 1558 by Thomas Lucy, who in 1578 was 
Sheriff of Warwickshire, who was elected to the Parlia- 
ments of 1 571 and 1584, and who was knighted by 
Queen Elizabeth in 1565. The porch to this building 
was designed by John of Padua. There is a silly ballad 
in existence, idly attributed to Shakespeare, which, it is 
said, was found affixed to Lucy's gate, and gave him 
great offence. He must have been more than com- 
monly sensitive to low abuse if he could have been 
annoyed by such a manifestly scurrilous ebullition of 
the blackguard and the blockhead, — supposing, indeed, 
that he ever saw it. The ballad, proffered as the work 
of Shakespeare, is a forgery. There is but one existing 
reason to think that the poet ever cherished a grudge 
against the Lucy family, and that is the coarse allusion 
to the "luces" which is found in the Merry Wives of 
Windsor. There was apparently, a second Sir Thomas 
Lucy, later than the Sheriff, who was more of the 
Puritanic breed, while Shakespeare evidently was a 
Cavalier. It is possible that in a youthful frolic the 
poet may have poached on Sheriff Lucy's preserves. 
Even so, the affair was trivial. It is possible, too, that 
in after years he may have had reason to dislike the 
ultra-Puritanical neighbour. Some memory of the tra- 
dition will, of course, haunt the traveller's thoughts as 
he strolls by Hatton Rock and through the villages of 
Hampton and Charlecote. But this discordant recollec- 
tion is soon smoothed away by the peaceful loveliness 
of the ramble — past aged hawthorns that Shakespeare 
himself may have seen, and under the boughs of 
beeches, limes, and drooping willows, where every foot- 
step falls on wild-flowers, or on a cool green turf that is 



xii SHAKESPEARE'S HOME 145 

softer than Indian silk and as firm and elastic as the 
sand of the sea-beaten shore. Thought of Sir Thomas 
Lucy will not be otherwise than kind, either, when the 
stranger in Charlecote church reads the epitaph with 
which the old knight commemorated his wife : " All 
the time of her Lyfe a true and faithfull servant of her 
good God ; never detected of any crime or vice ; in 
religion most sound; in love to her husband most 
faithfull and true. In friendship most constant. To 
what in trust was committed to her most secret ; in 
wisdom excelling; in governing her House and bringing 
up of Youth in the feare of God that did converse with 
her most rare and singular; a great maintainer of hos- 
pitality ; greatly esteemed of her betters ; misliked of 
none unless the envious. When all is spoken that can 
be said, a Woman so furnished and garnished with 
Virtue as not to be bettered, and hardly to be equalled 
of any ; as she lived most virtuously, so she dyed most 
godly. Set down by him that best did know what hath 
been written to be true. Thomas Lucy." A narrow 
formalist he may have been, and a severe magistrate in 
his dealings with scapegrace youths, and perhaps a 
haughty and disagreeable neighbour ; but there is a 
touch of manhood, high feeling, and virtuous and self- 
respecting character in those lines, that instantly wins 
the response of sympathy. If Shakespeare really shot 
the deer of Thomas Lucy the injured gentleman had a 
right to feel annoyed. Shakespeare, boy or man, was 
not a saint, and those who so account him can have 
read his works to but little purpose. He can bear the 
full brunt of his faults. He does not need to be 
canonised. 



146 



SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 



CHAP 



The ramble to Charlecote — one of the prettiest walks 
about Stratford — was, it may surely be supposed, often 
taken by Shakespeare. Many another ramble was pos- 
sible to him and no doubt was made. He would cross 
the mill bridge (new in 1599), which spans the Avon 
a little way to the south of the church. A quaint, 
sleepy mill no doubt it was — flecked with moss and 




Meadorv Walk by the Avon 



ivy — and the gaze of Shakespeare assuredly dwelt on 
it with pleasure. His footsteps may be traced, also, in 
fancy, to the region of the old college building, demol- 
ished in 1799, which stood in the southern part of 
Stratford, and was the home of his friend John Combe, 
factor of Fulke Greville, Earl of Warwick. Still an- 
other of his walks must have tended northward through 
Welcombe, where he was the owner of land, to the 



XII SHAKESPEARE'S HOME 147 

portly manor of Clopton, or to the home of William, 
nephew of John-a-Combe, which stood where the 
Phillips mansion stands now. On what is called the 
Ancient House, which stands on the west side of 
High Street, he may often have looked, as he strolled 
past to the Red Horse. That picturesque building, 
dated 1596, survives, notwithstanding some modern 
touches of rehabilitation, as a beautiful specimen of 
Tudor architecture in one at least of its most charming 
traits, the carved and timber-crossed gable. It is a 
house of three stories, containing parlour, sitting-room, 
kitchen, and several bedrooms, besides cellars and brew- 
shed ; and when sold at auction, August 23, 1876, it 
brought ^400. In that house was born John Harvard, 
who founded Harvard University. There are other 
dwellings fully as old in Stratford, but they have been 
covered with stucco and otherwise changed. This is a 
genuine piece of antiquity and it vies with the grammar- 
school and the hall of the Guild, under the pent-house 
of which the poet would pass whenever he went abroad 
from New Place. Julius Shaw, one of the five wit- 
nesses to his will, lived in the house next to the present 
New Place Museum, and there, it is reasonable to think, 
Shakespeare would often pause, for a word with his 
friend and neighbour. In the little streets by the river- 
side, which are ancient and redolent of the past, his 
image seems steadily familiar. In Dead Lane (once 
also called Walker Street, now called Chapel Lane) he 
owned a cottage, bought of Walter Getley in 1602, and 
only destroyed within the present century. These and 
kindred shreds of fact, suggesting the poet as a living 
man and connecting him, however vaguely, with our 



148 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

everyday experience, are seized with peculiar zest by 
the pilgrim in Stratford. Such a votary, for example, 
never doubts that Shakespeare was a frequenter, in 
leisure or convivial hours, of the ancient Red Horse 
inn. It stood there, in his day, as it stands now, on the 
north side of Bridge Street, westward from the Avon. 
There are many other taverns in the town — the 
Shakespeare, a delightful resort, the Falcon, the Rose 
and Crown, the old Red Lion, and the Swan's Nest, 
being a few of them, --but the Red Horse takes prece- 
dence of all its kindred, in the fascinating because sug- 
gestive attribute of antiquity. Moreover it was the Red 
Horse that harboured Washington Irving, the pioneer 
of American worshippers at the shrine of Shakespeare ; 
and the American explorer of Stratford would cruelly 
sacrifice his peace of mind if he were to repose under 
any other roof. The Red Horse is a rambling, three- 
story building, entered through an archway that leads 
into a long, straggling yard, adjacent to offices and 
stables. On one side of the entrance is found the 
smoking-room ; on the other is the coffee-room. Above 
are the bed-rooms. It is a thoroughly old-fashioned 
inn — such a one as we may suppose the Boar's Head 
to have been, in the time of Prince Henry ; such a one 
as untravelled Americans only know in the pages of 
Dickens. The rooms are furnished in neat, homelike 
style, and their associations readily deck them with the 
fragrant garlands of memory. When Drayton and 
Jonson came down to visit " gentle Will" at Stratford 
they could scarcely have omitted to quaff the humming 
ale of Warwickshire in that cosy parlour. When Queen 
Henrietta Maria was ensconced at New Place the gen- 



xii SHAKESPEARE'S HOME 149 

eral of the royal forces quartered himself at the Red 
Horse, and then doubtless there was enough and to 
spare of revelry within its walls. A little later the old 
house was soundly peppered by Roundhead bullets and 
the whole town was overrun with the close-cropped, 
psalm-singing soldiers of the Commonwealth. In 1742 
Garrick and Macklin lodged in the Red Horse, and 
thither again came Garrick in 1769, to direct the 
Shakespeare Jubilee, which was then most dismally 
accomplished but which is always remembered to the 
great actor's credit and honour. Betterton, no doubt, 
lodged there when he came to Stratford in quest of 
reminiscences of Shakespeare. The visit of Washing- 
ton Irving, supplemented with his delicious chronicle, 
has led to what might be called almost the consecration 
of the parlour in which he sat and the chamber (No. 
15) in which he slept. They still keep the poker — 
now marked " Geoffrey Crayon's sceptre " — with which, 
as he sat there in long, silent, ecstatic meditation, he 
prodded the fire in the narrow, tiny grate. They keep 
also the chair in which he sat — a plain, straight-backed 
arm-chair, with a haircloth seat, marked, on a brass 
plate, with his renowned and treasured name. Thus 
genius can sanctify even the humblest objects, 

" And shed a something of celestial light 
Round the familiar face of every day." 

To pass rapidly in review the little that is known of 
Shakespeare's life is, nevertheless, to be impressed not 
only by its incessant and amazing literary fertility but 
by the quick succession of its salient incidents. The 
vitality must have been enormous that created in so 



150 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

short a time such a number and variety of works of 
the first class. The same quick spirit would naturally 
have kept in agitation all the elements of his daily 
experience. Descended from an ancestor who had 
fought for the Red Rose on Bosworth Field, he was 
born to repute as well as competence, and during his 
early childhood he received instruction and training in 
a comfortable home. He escaped the plague that was 
raging in Stratford when he was an infant, and that 
took many victims. He went to school when seven 
years old and left it when about fourteen. He then had 
to work for his living — his once opulent father having 
fallen into misfortune — and he became an apprentice 
to a butcher, or else a lawyer's clerk (there were seven 
lawyers in Stratford at that time), or else a school- 
teacher. Perhaps he was all three — and more. It is 
conjectured that he saw the players who from time to 
time acted in the Guildhall, under the auspices of the 
corporation of Stratford ; that he attended the religious 
entertainments that were customarily given in the not 
distant city of Coventry ; and that in particular he wit- 
nessed the elaborate and sumptuous pageants with which 
in 1575 the Earl of Leicester welcomed Queen Elizabeth 
to Kenilworth Castle. He married at eighteen ; and, 
leaving a wife and three children in Stratford, he went 
up to London at twenty-two. His entrance into theat- 
rical life followed — in what capacity it is impossible to 
say. One dubious account says that he held horses for 
the public at the theatre door ; another that he got 
employment as a prompter to the actors. It is certain 
that he had not been in the theatrical business long 
before he began to make himself known. At twenty- 



xii SHAKESPEARE'S HOME 151 

eight he was a prosperous author. At twenty-nine he 
had acted with Burbage before Queen Elizabeth ; and 
while Spenser had extolled him in the " Tears of the 
Muses," the hostile Greene had disparaged him in the 
" Groat's-worth of Wit." At thirty-three he had ac- 
quired wealth enough to purchase New Place, the 
principal residence in his native town, where now he 
placed his family and established his home, — himself 
remaining in London, but visiting Stratford at frequent 
intervals. At thirty-four he was heard of as the actor 
of Knowell in Ben Jonson's comedy of Every Man in 
his Humour} and he received the glowing encomium of 
Meres in Wits Treasury. At thirty-eight he had writ- 
ten Hamlet and As You Like It, and moreover he had 
now become the owner of more estate in Stratford, 
costing ,£320. At forty-one he made his largest pur- 
chase, buying for £440 the " unexpired term of a 
moiety of the interest in a lease granted in 1554 for 
ninety-two years of the tithes of Stratford, Bishopton, 
and Welcombe." In the meantime he had smoothed 
the declining years of his father and had followed him 
with love and duty to the grave. Other domestic be- 
reavements likewise befell him, and other worldly cares 
and duties were laid upon his hands, but neither grief 
nor business could check the fertility of his brain. 
Within the next ten years he wrote, among other great 
plays, Othello, Lear, Maebeth, and Coriolanus. At 

1 Jonson's famous comedy was first acted in 1598, "By the then Lord 
Chamberlain his servants." Knowell is designated as " an old gentleman." 
The Jonson Folio of 1692 names as follows the principal comedians who 
acted in that piece : " Will. Shakespeare. Aug. Philips. Hen. Condel. Will. 
Slye. Will. Kempe. Ric. Burbadge. Joh. Hemings. Tho. Pope. Chr. Beston. 
Joh. Duke." 



152 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

about forty-eight he seems to have disposed of his 
interest in the two London theatres with which he had 
been connected, the Blackfriars and the Globe, and 
shortly afterwards, his work as we possess it being 
well-nigh completed, he retired finally to his Stratford 
home. That he was the comrade of many bright spirits 
who glittered in " the spacious times" of Elizabeth sev- 
eral of them have left personal testimony. That he 
was the king of them all is shown in his works. The 
Sonnets seem to disclose that there was a mysterious, 
almost a tragical, passage in his life, and that he was 
called to bear the burden of a great and perhaps a 
calamitous personal grief — one of those griefs, which, 
being caused by sinful love, are endless in the punish- 
ment they entail. Happily, however, no antiquarian 
student of Shakespeare's time has yet succeeded in com- 
ing near to the man. While he was in London he used 
to frequent the Falcon Tavern, in Southwark, and the 
Mermaid, and he lived at one time in St. Helen's parish, 
Alderssrate. and at another time in Clink Street, South- 
wark. As an actor his name has been associated with 
his characters of Adam, Friar Lawrence, and the Ghost 
of King Hamlet, and a contemporary reference declared 
him " excellent in the quality he professes." Some of 
his manuscripts, it is possible, perished in the fire that 
consumed the Globe theatre in 1613. He passed his 
last days in his home at Stratford, and died there, some- 
what suddenly, on his fifty-second birthday. That event, 
it may be worth while to observe, occurred within thirty- 
three years of the execution of Charles the First, under 
the Puritan Commonwealth of Oliver Cromwell. The 
Puritan spirit, intolerant of the play-house and of all 



xii SHAKESPEARE'S HOME 153 

its works, must then have been gaining formidable 
strength. His daughter Susanna, aged thirty-three at 
the time of his death, survived him thirty-three years. 
His daughter Judith, aged thirty-one at the time of his 
death, survived him forty-six years. The whisper of 
tradition says that both were Puritans. If so the strange 
and seemingly unaccountable disappearance of whatever 
play-house papers he may have left at Stratford should 
not be obscure. This suggestion is likely to have been 
made before ; and also it is likely to have been supple- 
mented with a reference to the great fire in London in 
1666 — (which in consuming St. Paul's cathedral burned 
an immense quantity of books and manuscripts that had 
been brought from all the threatened parts of the city 
and heaped beneath its arches for safety) — as prob- 
ably the final and effectual holocaust of almost every 
piece of print or writing that might have served to 
illuminate the history of Shakespeare. In his person- 
ality no less than in the fathomless resources of his 
genius he baffles scrutiny and stands for ever alone. 

" Others abide our question ; thou art free : 
We ask, and ask; thou smilest and art still — 
Out-topping knowledge. 1 ' 

It is impossible to convey an adequate suggestion of 
the prodigious and overwhelming sense of peace that 
falls upon the soul of the pilgrim in Stratford church. 
All the cares and struggles and trials of mortal life, all 
its failures, and equally all its achievements, seem there 
to pass utterly out of remembrance. It is not now an 
idle reflection that " the paths of glory lead but to the 
grave." No power of human thought ever rose higher 



154 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

or went further than the thought of Shakespeare. No 
human being, using the best weapons of intellectual 
achievement, ever accomplished so much. Yet here he 
lies — who was once so great ! And here also, gathered 
around him in death, lie his parents, his children, his 
descendants, and his friends. For him and for them 
the struggle has long since ended. Let no man fear to 
tread the dark pathway that Shakespeare has trodden 
before him. Let no man, standing at this grave, and 
seeing and feeling that all the vast labours of that 
celestial genius end here at last in a handful of dust, 
fret and grieve any more over the puny and evanescent 
toils of to-day, so soon to be buried in oblivion ! In the 
simple performance of duty and in the life of the affec- 
tions there may be permanence and solace. The rest 
is an " insubstantial pageant." It breaks, it changes, 
it dies, it passes away, it is forgotten ; and though a 
great name be now and then for a little while remem- 
bered, what can the remembrance of mankind signify 
to him who once wore it ? Shakespeare, there is reason 
to believe, set precisely the right value alike upon 
contemporary renown and the homage of posterity. 
Though he went forth, as the stormy impulses of his 
nature drove him, into the great world of London, and 
there laid the firm hand of conquest upon the spoils of 
wealth and power, he came back at last to the peaceful 
home of his childhood ; he strove to garner up the 
comforts and everlasting treasures of love at his hearth- 
stone ; he sought an enduring monument in the hearts 
of friends and companions ; and so he won for his 
stately sepulchre the garland not alone of glory but of 
affection. Through the high eastern window of the 



xii SHAKESPEARE'S HOME 155 

chancel of Holy Trinity church the morning sunshine, 
broken into many-coloured light, streams in upon the 
grave of Shakespeare and gilds his bust upon the wall 
above it. He lies close by the altar, and every circum- 
stance of his place of burial is eloquent of his hold 
upon the affectionate esteem of his contemporaries. 
The line of graves beginning at the north wall of the 
chancel and extending across to the south seems 
devoted entirely to Shakespeare and his family, with 
but one exception. 1 The pavement that covers them is 
of that blue-gray slate or freestone which in England is 
sometimes called black marble. In the first grave under 
the north wall rests Shakespeare's wife. The next is 
that of the poet himself, bearing the world-famed words 
of blessing and imprecation. Then comes the grave of 
Thomas Nashe, husband to Elizabeth Hall, the poet's 
granddaughter, who died April 4, 1647. Next is that 
of Dr. John Hall (obiit November 25, 1635), husband to 
his daughter Susanna, and close beside him rests 
Susanna herself, who was buried on July 11, 1649. 
The gravestones are laid east and west, and all but one 
present inscriptions. That one is under the south wall, 
and possibly it covers the dust of Judith — Mrs. Thomas 
Quiney — the youngest daughter of Shakespeare, who, 
surviving her three children and thus leaving no 
descendants, died in 1662. Upon the gravestone of 
Susanna an inscription has been intruded commemora- 
tive of Richard Watts, who is not, however, known 
to have had any relationship with either Shakespeare 
or his descendants. Shakespeare's father, who died in 

1 " The poet knew," says J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps, " that as a tithe- 
owner he would necessarily be buried in the chancel." 



156 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

1601, and his mother, Mary Arden, who died in 1608, 
were buried in or near this church. (The register 
says, under Burials, "September 9, 1608, Mayry Shax- 
spere, wydowe.") His infant sisters Joan, Margaret, 
and Anne, and his brother Richard, who died, aged 
thirty-nine, in 161 3, may also have been laid to rest in 
this place. Of the death and burial of his brother 
Gilbert there is no record. His sister Joan, the second 
— Mrs. Hart — would naturally have been placed with 
her relatives. His brother Edmund, dying in 1607, 
aged twenty-seven, is under the pavement of St. 
Saviour's church in Southwark. The boy Hamnet, 
dying before his father had risen into local eminence, 
rests, probably, in an undistinguished grave in the 
churchyard. (The register records his- burial on August 
11, 1596.) The family of Shakespeare seems to have 
been short-lived and it was soon extinguished. He 
himself died at fifty-two. Judith's children perished 
young. Susanna bore but one child — Elizabeth — 
who became successively Mrs. Nashe and Lady Bar- 
nard, and she, dying in 1670, was buried at Abingdon, 
near Oxford. She left no children by either husband, 
and in her the race of Shakespeare became extinct. 
That of Anne Hathaway also has nearly disappeared, 
the last living descendant of the Hathaways being Mrs. 
Baker, the present occupant of Anne's cottage at Shot- 
tery. Thus, one by one, from the pleasant gardened 
town of Stratford, they went to take up their long abode 
in that old church, which was ancient even in their 
infancy, and which, watching through the centuries in 
its monastic solitude on the shore of Avon, has seen 
their lands and houses devastated by flood and fire, the 



xii SHAKESPEARE'S HOME 157 

places that knew them changed by the tooth of time, 
and almost all the associations of their lives obliterated 
by the improving hand of destruction. 

One of the oldest and most interesting Shakespearean 
documents in existence is the narrative, by a traveller 
named Dowdall, of his observations in Warwickshire, 
and of his visit, on April 10, 1693, to Stratford church. 
He describes therein the bust and the tombstone of 
Shakespeare, and he adds these remarkable words : 
" The clerk that showed me this church is above eighty 
years old. He says that not one, for fear of the curse 
above said, dare touch his gravestone, though his wife 
and daughter did earnestly desire to be laid in the same 
grave with him." Writers in modern days have been 
pleased to disparage that inscription and to conjecture 
that it was the work of a sexton and not of the poet; 
but no one denies that it has accomplished its purpose 
in preserving the sanctity of Shakespeare's rest. Its 
rugged strength, its simple pathos, its fitness, and its 
sincerity make it felt as unquestionably the utterance 
of Shakespeare himself, when it is read upon the slab 
that covers him. There the musing traveller full well 
conceives how dearly the poet must have loved the 
beautiful scenes of his birthplace, and with what intense 
longing he must have desired to sleep undisturbed in 
the most sacred spot in their bosom. He doubtless 
had some premonition of his approaching death. Three 
months before it came he made his will. A little later 
he saw the marriage of his younger daughter. Within 
less than a month of his death he executed the will, 
and thus set his affairs in order. His handwriting in 
the three signatures to that paper conspicuously ex- 



158 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

hibits the uncertainty and lassitude of shattered nerves. 
He was probably quite worn out. Within the space, at 
the utmost, of twenty-five years, he had written thirty- 
seven plays, one hundred and fifty-four sonnets, and 
two or more long poems ; had passed through much 
and painful toil and through bitter sorrow ; had made 
his fortune as author and actor ; and had superintended, 
to excellent advantage, his property in London and his 
large interests in Stratford and its neighbourhood. The 
proclamation of health with which the will begins was 
doubtless a formality of legal custom. The story that 
he died of drinking too hard at a merry meeting with 
Drayton and Ben Jonson is idle gossip. If in those 
last days of fatigue and presentiment he wrote the 
epitaph that has ever since marked his grave, it would 
naturally have taken the plainest fashion of speech. 
Such is its character; and no pilgrim to the poet's 
shrine could wish to see it changed : — 

" Good frend for Iesvs sake forbeare, 
To digg the dvst encloased heare ; 
Blese be y e man y* spares thes stones 
And cvrst be he y l moves my bones. 1 ' 

It was once surmised that the poet's solicitude lest 
his bones might be disturbed in death grew out of his 
intention to take with him into the grave a confession 
that the works which now follow him were written 
by another hand. Persons have been found who actu- 
ally believe that a man who was great enough to write 
Hamlet could be little enough to feel ashamed of it, 
and, accordingly, that Shakespeare was only hired to 
play at authorship, as a screen for the actual author. It 



xii SHAKESPEARE'S HOME 159 

might not, perhaps, be strange that a desire for singu- 
larity, which is one of the worst literary crazes of this 
capricious age, should prompt to the rejection of the 
conclusive and overwhelming testimony to Shakespeare's 
genius that has been left by Shakespeare's contempo- 
raries, and that shines forth in all that is known of his 
life. It is strange that a doctrine should get itself 
asserted which is subversive of common reason and 
contradictory to every known law of the human mind. 
This conjectural confession of poetic imposture has 
never been exhumed. The grave is known to have 
been disturbed, in 1796, when alterations were made 
in the church, 1 and there came a time in the present 
century when, as they were making repairs in the chan- 
cel pavement (the chancel was renovated in 1835), a 
rift was accidently made in the Shakespeare vault. 
Through this, though not without misgiving, the sexton 
peeped in upon the poet's remains. He saw nothing 
but dust. 

The antique font from which the infant Shakespeare 
may have received the water of Christian baptism is 
still preserved in this church. It was thrown aside and 
replaced by a new one about the middle of the seven- 

1 It was the opinion — not conclusive but interesting — of the late J. O. 
Halliwell-Phillipps that at one or other of these "restorations " the original 
tombstone of Shakespeare was removed and another one, from the yard 
of a modern stone-mason, put in its place. Dr. Ingleby, in his book on 
Shakespeare's Bones, 1883, asserts that the original stone was removed. 
I have compared Shakespeare's tombstone with that of his wife, and with 
others in the chancel, but I have not found the discrepancy observed by 
Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, and I think there is no reason to believe that the 
original tombstone has ever been disturbed. The letters upon it were, 
probably, cut deeper in 1835. 



160 



SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 



teenth century. Many years afterward it was found in 
the charnel-house. When that was destroyed, in 1800, 
it was cast into the churchyard. In later times the 
parish clerk used it as a trough to his pump. It passed 
then through the hands of several successive owners, 




Remains of the old Font at which, probably, Shakespeare was christened, 
now in the Nave of Stratford Church. 

till at last, in days that had learned to value the past 
and the associations connected with its illustrious names, 
it found its way back again to the sanctuary from which 
it had suffered such a rude expulsion. It is still a hand- 
some stone, though broken, soiled, and marred. 

On the north wall of the chancel, above his srave 



xii SHAKESPEARE'S HOME 161 

and near to " the American window," is placed Shake- 
speare's monument. It is known to have been erected 
there within seven years after his death. It consists of 
a half-length effigy, placed beneath a fretted arch, with 
entablature and pedestal, between two Corinthian col- 
umns of black marble, gilded at base and top. Above 
the entablature appear the armorial bearings of Shake- 
speare — a pointed spear on a bend sable and a silver 
falcon on a tasselled helmet supporting a spear. Over 
this heraldic emblem is a death's-head, and on each 
side of it sits a carved cherub, one holding a spade, the 
other an inverted torch. In front of the effigy is a 
cushion, upon which both hands rest, holding a scroll 
and a pen. Beneath is an inscription in Latin and 
English, supposed to have been furnished by the poet's 
son-in-law, Dr. Hall. The bust was cut by Gerard 
Jonson, a native of Amsterdam and by occupation a 
" tomb-maker," who lived in Southwark and possibly 
had seen the poet. The material is a soft stone, and 
the work, when first set up, was painted in the colours 
of life. Its peculiarities indicate that it was copied 
from a mask of the features taken after death. Some 
persons believe (upon slender and dubious testimony) 
that this mask has since been found, and busts of 
Shakespeare have been based upon it, by W. R. 
O' Donovan and by William Page. In September, 1764, 
John Ward, grandfather of Mrs. Siddons, having come 
to Stratford with a theatrical company, gave a perform- 
ance of Othello, in the Guildhall, and devoted its pro- 
ceeds to reparation of the Gerard Jonson effigy, then 
somewhat damaged by time. The original colours were 
then carefully restored and freshened. In 1793, under 




Shakespeare's Monument. 



chap, xii SHAKESPEARE'S HOME 163 

the direction of Malone, this bust, together with the 
image of John-a-Combe — a recumbent statue upon a 
tomb close to the east wall of the chancel — was coated 
with white paint. From that plight it was extricated, 
in 1 86 1, by the assiduous skill of Simon Collins, who 
immersed it in a bath which took off the white paint 
and restored the colours. The eyes are painted light 
hazel, the hair and pointed beard auburn, the face and 
hands flesh-tint. The dress consists of a scarlet doub- 
let, with a rolling collar, closely buttoned down the 
front, worn under a loose black gown without sleeves. 
The upper part of the cushion is green, the lower part 
crimson, and this object is ornamented with gilt tassels. 
The stone pen that used to be in the right hand of the 
bust was taken from it, toward the end of the last cen- 
tury, by a young Oxford student, and, being dropped by 
him upon the pavement, was broken. A quill pen has 
been put in its place. This is the inscription beneath 
the bust : — 

• Ivdicio Pylivm, genio Socratem, arte Maronem, 
Terra tegit, popvlvs maeret, Olympvs habet. 

Stay, passenger, why goest thov by so fast ? 
Read, if thov canst, whom enviovs Death hath plast 
Within this monvment : Shakspeare : with whome 
Qvick Natvre dide ; whose name doth deck ys tombe 
Far more than cost ; sieth all y l he hath writt 
Leaves living art bvt page to serve his witt. 

Obiit Ano. Doi. 1616. ^Etatis 53. Die. 23. Ap. 

The erection of the old castles, cathedrals, monas- 
teries, and churches of England was accomplished, 
little by little, with laborious toil protracted through 



164 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

many years. Stratford church, probably more than 
seven centuries old, presents a mixture of architectural 
styles, in which Saxon simplicity and Norman grace are 
beautifully mingled. Different parts of the structure 
were built at different times. It is fashioned in the 
customary crucial form, with a square tower, an octa- 
gon stone spire, (erected in 1764, to replace a more 
ancient one, made of oak and covered with lead), and a 
fretted battlement all around its roof. Its windows are 
diversified, but mostly Gothic. The approach to it is 
across a churchyard thickly sown with graves, through 
a lovely green avenue of lime-trees, leading to a porch 
on its north side. This avenue of foliage is said to be 
the copy of one that existed there in Shakespeare's day, 
through which he must often have walked, and through 
which at last he was carried to his grave. Time itself 
has fallen asleep in that ancient place. The low sob of 
the organ only deepens the awful sense of its silence 
and its dreamless repose. Yews and elms grow in the 
churchyard, and many a low tomb and many a leaning 
stone are there, in the shadow, gray with moss and 
mouldering with age. Birds have built their nests in 
many crevices in the timeworn tower, round which at 
sunset you may see them circle, with chirp of greeting 
or with call of anxious discontent. Near by flows the 
peaceful river, reflecting the gray spire in its dark, 
silent, shining waters. In the long and lonesome mead- 
ows beyond it the primroses stand in their golden ranks 
among the clover, and the frilled and fluted bell of the 
cowslip, hiding its single drop of blood in its bosom, 
closes its petals as the night comes down. 

Northward, at a little distance from the Church of 



xii SHAKESPEARE'S HOME 165 

the Holy Trinity, stands, on the west bank of the 
Avon, the building that will always be famous as the 
Shakespeare Memorial. The idea of the Memorial was 
suggested in 1864, incidentally to the ceremonies which 
then commemorated the three-hundredth anniversary 
of the poet's birth. Ten years later the site for this 
structure was presented to the town by Charles Edward 
Flower, one of its most honoured inhabitants. Contri- 
butions of money were then asked, and were given. 
Americans as well as Englishmen contributed. On 
April 23, 1877, the first stone of the Memorial was laid. 
On April 23, 1880, the building was dedicated. The 
fabric comprises a theatre, a library, and a picture- 
gallery. In the theatre the plays of Shakespeare are 
annually represented, in a manner as nearly perfect as 
possible. In the library and picture-gallery are to be 
assembled all the books upon Shakespeare that have 
been published, and all the choice paintings that can 
be obtained to illustrate his life and his works. As the 
years pass this will naturally become a principal deposi- 
tory of Shakespearean objects. A dramatic college 
may grow up, in association with the Shakespeare 
theatre. The gardens that surround the Memorial will 
augment their loveliness in added expanse of foliage 
and in greater wealth of floral luxuriance. The mellow 
tinge of age will soften the bright tints of the red brick 
that mainly composes the building On its cone-shaped 
turrets ivy will clamber and moss will nestle. When a 
few generations have passed, the old town of Stratford 
will have adopted this now youthful stranger into the 
race of her venerated antiquities. The same air of 
poetic mystery that rests now upon his cottage and his 



166 



SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 



CHAP. XII 



grave will diffuse itself around his Memorial ; and a 
remote posterity, looking back to the men and the 
ideas of to-day, will remember with grateful pride that 
English-speaking people of the nineteenth century, 
although they could confer no honour upon the great 
name of Shakespeare, yet honoured themselves in 
consecrating this votive temple to his memory. 





CHAPTER XIII 



UP TO LONDON 



1882 




BOUT the middle of the night the great 
ship comes to a pause, off the coast of 
Ireland, and, looking forth across the 
black waves and through the rifts in the 
rising mist, we see the low and lonesome 
verge of that land of trouble and misery. A beautiful 
white light flashes now and then from the shore, and at 
intervals the mournful booming of a solemn bell floats 
over the sea. Soon is heard the rolling click of oars, and 
then two or three dusky boats glide past the ship, and 
hoarse voices hail and answer. A few stars are visible 
in the hazy sky, and the breeze from the land brings 
off, in fitful puffs, the fragrant balm of grass and clover, 
mingled with the salt odours of sea-weed and slimy 
rocks. There is a sense of mystery over the whole wild 
scene ; but we realise now that human companionship 
is near, and that the long and lonely ocean voyage is 
ended. 

Travellers who make the run from Liverpool to Lon- 

167 



chap, xni UP TO LONDON 169 

don by the Midland Railway pass through the vale of 
Derby and skirt around the stately Peak that Scott has 
commemorated in his novel of Peveril. It is a more 
rugged country than is seen in the transit by the North- 
western road, but not more beautiful. You see the 
storied mountain, in its delicacy of outline and its airy 
magnificence of poise, soaring into the sky — its summit 
almost lost in the smoky haze — and you wind through 
hillside pastures and meadow-lands that are curiously 
intersected with low, zigzag stone walls; and constantly, 
as the scene changes, you catch glimpses of green lane 
and shining river ; of dense copses that cast their cool 
shadow on the moist and gleaming emerald sod ; of 
long white roads that stretch away like cathedral aisles 
and are lost beneath the leafy arches of elm and oak ; 
of little church towers embowered in ivy ; of thatched 
cottages draped with roses ; of dark ravines, luxuriant 
with a wild profusion of rocks and trees ; and of golden 
grain that softly waves and whispers in the summer 
wind ; while, all around, the grassy banks and glimmer- 
ing meadows are radiant with yellow daisies, and with 
that wonderful scarlet of the poppy that gives an almost 
human glow of life and loveliness to the whole face of 
England. After some hours of such a pageant — so 
novel, so fascinating, so fleeting, so stimulative of eager 
curiosity and poetic desire — it is a relief at last to 
stand in the populous streets and among the grim 
houses of London, with its surging tides of life, and its 
turmoil of effort, conflict, exultation, and misery. How 
strange it seems — yet, at the same time, how homelike 
and familiar ! There soars aloft the great dome of 
St. Paul's cathedral, with its golden cross that flashes 




s 



chap, xni UP TO LONDON 171 

in the sunset ! There stands the Victoria tower — fit 
emblem of the true royalty of the sovereign whose name 
it bears. And there, more lowly but more august, rise 
the sacred turrets of the Abbey. It is the same old 
London — the great heart of the modern world — the 
great city of our reverence and love. As the wanderer 
writes these words he hears the plashing of the foun- 
tains in Trafalgar Square and the evening chimes that 
peal out from the spire of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, and 
he knows himself once more at the shrine of his youth- 
ful dreams. 

To the observant stranger in London few sights can 
be more impressive than those that illustrate the singu- 
lar manner in which the life of the present encroaches 
upon the memorials of the past. Old Temple Bar has 
gone, — a sculptured griffin, at the junction of Fleet 
Street and the Strand, denoting where once it stood. 
(It has been removed to Theobald's Park, near Wal- 
tham, and is now the lodge gate of the grounds of Sir 
Henry Meux.) The Midland Railway trains dash over 
what was once St. Pancras churchyard — the burial- 
place of Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, and 
of many other British worthies — and passengers look- 
ing from the carriages may see the children of the 
neighbourhood sporting among the few tombs that yet 
remain in that despoiled cemetery. Dolly's Chop- 
House, intimately associated with the wits of the reign 
of Queen Anne, has been destroyed. The ancient tav- 
ern of The Cock, immortalised by Tennyson, in his 
poem of Will Waterproof 's Monologue, is soon to 
disappear, — with its singular wooden vestibule that 
existed before the time of the Plague and that escaped 



172 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chai\ xiii 

the great fire of 1666. On the site of Northumberland 
House stands the Grand Hotel. The gravestones that 
formerly paved the precinct of Westminster Abbey have 
been removed, to make way for grassy lawns intersected 
with pathways. In Southwark, across the Thames, 
the engine-room of the brewery of Messrs. Barclay & 
Perkins occupies the site of the Globe Theatre, in which 
most of Shakespeare's plays were first produced. One 
of the most venerable and beautiful churches in London, 
that of St. Bartholomew the Great, — a gray, moulder- 
ing temple, of the twelfth century, hidden away in a 
corner of Smithfield, — is desecrated by the irruption 
of an adjacent shop, the staircase hall of which breaks 
cruelly into the sacred edifice and impends above the 
altar. On July 12, 1882, the present writer, walk- 
ing in the churchyard of St. Paul's, Covent Garden, 
— the sepulchre of William Wycherley, Robert Wilks, 
Charles Macklin, Joseph Haines, Thomas King, Samuel 
Butler, Thomas Southerne, Edward Shuter, Dr. Arne, 
Thomas Davies, Edward Kynaston, Richard Estcourt, 
William Havard, and many other renowned votaries of 
literature and the stage, — found workmen building a 
new wall to sustain the enclosure, and almost every 
stone in the cemetery uprooted and leaning against the 
adjacent houses. Those monuments, it was said, would 
be replaced ; but it was impossible not to consider the 
chances of error in a new mortuary deal — and the 
grim witticism of Rufus Choate, about dilating with 
the wrong emotion, came then into remembrance, and 
did not come amiss. 

Facts such as these, however, bid us remember that 
even the relics of the past are passing away, and 




V 






re 




174 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

that cities, unlike human creatures, may grow to be so 
old that at last they will become new. It is not wonder- 
ful that London should change its aspect from one 
decade to another, as the living surmount and obliterate 
the dead. Thomas Sutton's Charter-House School, 
founded in 1611, when Shakespeare and Ben Jonson 
were still writing, was reared upon ground in which 
several thousand corses were buried, during the time of 
the Indian pestilence of 1348; and it still stands and 
nourishes — though not as vigorously now as might be 
wished. Nine thousand new houses, it is said, are built 
in the great capital every year, and twenty-eight miles 
of new street are thus added to it. On a Sunday I 
drove for three hours through the eastern part of Lon- 
don without coming upon a single trace of the open 
fields. On the west, all the region from Kensington to 
Richmond is settled for most part of the way ; while 
northward the city is stretching its arms toward H amp- 
stead, Highgate, and tranquil and blooming Finchley. 
Truly the spirit of this age is in strong contrast with 
that of the time of Henry the Eighth when (1530), 
to prevent the increasing size of London, all new 
buildings were forbidden to be erected " where no 
former hath been known to have been." The march 
of improvement nowadays carries everything before 
it : even British conservatism is at some points giving 
way : and, noting the changes that have occurred here 
within only five years, I am persuaded that those who 
would see what remains of the London of which they 
have read and dreamed — the London of Dryden and 
Pope, of Addison, Sheridan, and Byron, of Betterton, 
Garrick, and Edmund Kean — will, as time passes, 



XIII 



UP TO LONDON 



175 



find more and more difficulty both in tracing the foot- 
steps of fame, and in finding that sympathetic, rev- 
erent spirit which hallows the relics of genius and 
renown. 







i 







CHAPTER XIV 



OLD CHURCHES OF LONDON 




IGHT-SEEING, merely for its own sake, 
is not to be commended. Hundreds of 
persons roam through the storied places 
of England, carrying nothing away but the 
bare sense of travel. It is not the spec- 
tacle that benefits, but the meaning of the spectacle. In 
the great temples of religion, in those wonderful cathe- 
drals that are the glory of the old world, we ought to feel, 
not merely the physical beauty but the perfect, illimita- 
ble faith, the passionate, incessant devotion, which alone 
made them possible. The cold intellect of a sceptical 
age, like the present, could never create such a majestic 
cathedral as that of Canterbury. Not till the pilgrim 
feels this truth has he really learned the lesson of such 
places, — to keep alive in his heart the capacity of self- 
sacrifice, of toil and of tears, for the grandeur and 
beauty of the spiritual life. At the tombs of great men 
we ought to feel something more than a consciousness 
of the crumbling clay that moulders within, — some- 
thing more even than knowledge of their memorable 

176 



chap, xiv OLD CHURCHES OF LONDON 177 

words and deeds : we ought, as we ponder on the cer- 
tainty of death and the evanescence of earthly things, 
to realise that art at least is permanent, and that no 
creature can be better employed than in noble effort to 
make the soul worthy of immortality. The relics of the 
past, contemplated merely because they are relics, are 
nothing. You tire, in this old land, of the endless array 
of ruined castles and of wasting graves ; you sicken at 
the thought of the mortality of a thousand years, decay- 
ing at your feet, and you long to look again on roses 
and the face of childhood, the ocean and the stars. 
But not if the meaning of the past is truly within your 
sympathy ; not if you perceive its associations as feeling 
equally with knowledge ; not if you truly know that its 
lessons are not of death but of life ! To-day builds over 
the ruins of yesterday, as well in the soul of man as on 
the vanishing cities that mark his course. There need 
be no regret that the present should, in this sense, 
obliterate the past. 

Much, however, as London has changed, and con- 
stantly as it continues to change, many objects still 
remain, and long will continue to remain, that startle 
and impress the sensitive mind. Through all its wide 
compass, by night and clay, flows and beats a turbulent, 
resounding tide of activity, and hundreds of trivial and 
vacuous persons, sordid, ignorant, and commonplace 
tramp to and fro amid its storied antiquities, heedless of 
their existence. Through such surroundings, but find- 
ing here and there a sympathetic guide or a friendly 
suggestion, the explorer must make his way, — lonely 
in the crowd, and walking like one who lives in a dream. 
Yet he never will drift in vain through a city like this. 



17S SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND Chap. 

I went one night into the cloisters of Westminster 
Abbey — that part, the South Walk, which is still acces- 
sible after the gates have been closed. The stars 
shone down upon the blackening walls and glimmering 
windows of the great cathedral ; the grim, mysterious 
arches were dimly lighted ; the stony pathways, stretch- 
ing away beneath the venerable building, seemed to lose 
themselves in caverns of darkness ; not a sound was 
heard but the faint rustling of the grass upon the 
cloister green. Every stone there is the mark of a 
sepulchre ; every breath of the night wind seemed the 
whisper of a gliding ghost. There, among the crowded 
graves, rest Anne Oldfield and Anne Bracegirdle, — in 
Queen Anne's reign such brilliant luminaries of the 
stage, — and there was buried the dust of Aaron Hill, 
poet and dramatist, once manager of Drury Lane, who 
wrote The Fair Inconstant for Barton Booth, and some 
notably felicitous love-songs. There, too, are the relics 
of Susanna Maria Arne (Mrs. Theo. Cibber), Mrs. Dan- 
cer, Thomas Betterton, and Spranger Barry. Sitting 
upon the narrow ledge that was the monks' rest, I could 
touch, close at hand, the tomb of a mitred abbot, while 
at my feet was the great stone that covers twenty-six 
monks of Westminster who perished by the Plague 
nearly six hundred years ago. It would scarcely be 
believed that the doors of dwellings open upon that 
gloomy spot ; that ladies may sometimes be seen tend- 
ing flowers upon the ledges that roof those cloister 
walks. Yet so it is ; and in such a place, at such a time, 
you comprehend better than before the self-centred, se- 
rious, ruminant, romantic character of the English mind, 
— which loves, more than anything else in the world, 



xiv OLD CHURCHES OF LONDON 179 

the privacy of august surroundings and a sombre and 
stately solitude. It hardly need be said that you like- 
wise obtain here a striking sense of the power of con- 
trast. I was again aware of this, a little later, when, 
seeing a dim light in St. Margaret's church near by, I 
entered that old temple and found the men of the choir 
at their rehearsal, and presently observed on the wall a 
brass plate which announces that Sir Walter Raleigh 
was buried here, in the chancel, — after being decapi- 
tated for high treason in the Palace Yard outside. 
Such things are the surprises of this historic capital. 
This inscription begs the reader to remember Raleigh's 
virtues as well as his faults, — a plea, surely, that every 
man might well wish should be made for himself at last. 
I thought of the verses that the old warrior-poet is said 
to have left in his Bible, when they led him out to 
die — 

" Even such is time ; that takes in trust 

Our youth, our joys, our all we have, 
And pays us nought but age and dust ; 

Which, in the dark and silent grave, 
When we have wandered all our ways, 

Shuts up the story of our days. — 
But from this earth, this grave, this dust, 

My God shall raise me up, I trust. 1 ' 

This church contains a window commemorative of 
Raleigh, presented by Americans, and inscribed with 
these lines, by Lowell — 

" The New World's sons, from England's breast we drew 
Such milk as bids remember whence we came ; 
Proud of her past, wherefrom our future grew, 
This window we inscribe with Raleigh's name. 1 ' 



180 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

It also contains a window commemorative of Caxton, 
presented by the printers and publishers of London, 
which is inscribed with these lines by Tennyson — 

" Thy prayer was Light — more Light — while Time shall last, 
Thou sawest a glory growing on the night, 
But not the shadows which that light would cast 
Till shadows vanish in the Light of Light." 

In St. Margaret's — a storied haunt, for shining 
names alike of nobles and poets — was also buried John 
Skelton, another of the old bards (obiit 1529), the enemy 
and satirist of Cardinal Wolsey and Sir Thomas More, 
one of whom he described as " madde Amaleke," and 
the other as " dawcock doctor." Their renown has 
managed to survive those terrific shafts ; but at least 
this was a falcon who flew at eagles. Here the poet 
Campbell was married, — October 11, 1803. Such old 
churches as this — guarding so well their treasures of 
history — are, in a special sense, the traveller's bless- 
ings. At St. Giles's, Cripplegate, the janitor is a 
woman ; and she will point out to you the lettered stone 
that formerly marked the grave of Milton. It is in the 
nave, but it has been moved to a place about twelve 
feet from its original position, — the remains of the illus- 
trious poet being, in fact, beneath the floor of a pew, on 
the left of the central aisle, about the middle of the 
church: albeit there is a story, possibly true, that, on 
an occasion when this church was repaired, in August, 
1790, the coffin of Milton suffered profanation, and his 
bones were dispersed. Among the monuments hard by 
is a fine marble bust of Milton, placed against the wall, 
and it is said, by way of enhancing its value, that 







'Ha 



XIV 



OLD CHURCHES OF LONDON 181 



George the Third came here to see it. 1 Several of the 
neighbouring inscriptions are of astonishing quaintness. 
The adjacent churchyard — an eccentric, sequestered, 
lonesome bit of grassy ground, teeming with monuments, 
and hemmed in with houses, terminates, at one end, in 
a piece of the old Roman wall of London (a.d. 306), — 
an adamantine structure of cemented flints — which has 
lasted from the days of Constantine, and which bids fair to 
last forever. I shall always remember that strange nook 
with the golden light of a summer morning shining upon 
it, the birds twittering among its graves, and all around 
it such an atmosphere of solitude and rest as made it 
seem, though in the heart of the great city, a thousand 
miles from any haunt of man. (It was formally opened 
as a garden for public recreation on July 8, 1891.) 

St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, an ancient and venerable 
temple, the church of the priory of the nuns of St. 
Helen, built in the thirteenth century, is full of relics 
of the history of England. The priory, which adjoined 
this church, has long since disappeared and portions of 
the building have been restored ; but the noble Gothic 
columns and the commemorative sculpture remain un- 
changed. Here are the tombs of Sir John Crosby, who 
built Crosby Place (1466), Sir Thomas Gresham, who 
founded both Gresham College and the Royal Exchange 
in London, and Sir William Pickering, once Queen Eliz- 
abeth's Minister to Spain and one of the amorous aspir- 
ants for her royal hand ; and here, in a gloomy chapel, 

1 This memorial bears the following inscription : " John Milton. Author 
of 'Paradise Lost.' Born, December 1608. Died, November 1674. His 
father, John Milton, died, March 1 646. They were both interred in this 
church." 



182 



SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 



CHAt\ 



stands the veritable altar at which, it is said, the Duke 
of Gloster received absolution, after the disappearance 
of the princes in the Tower. Standing at that altar, in 
the cool silence of the lonely church and the waning 
light of afternoon, it was easy to conjure up his slender, 
slightly misshapen form, decked in the rich apparel that 
he loved, his handsome, aquiline, thoughtful face, the 




Sir John Crosby's Monument. 

drooping head, the glittering eyes, the nervous hand 
that toyed with the dagger, and the stealthy stillness of 
his person, from head to foot, as he knelt there before 
the priest and perhaps mocked both himself and heaven 
with the form of prayer. Every place that Richard 
touched is haunted by his magnetic presence. In an- 
other part of the church you are shown the tomb of a 
person whose will provided that the key of his sepulchre 



XIV 



OLD CHURCHES OF LONDON 



183 



should be placed beside his body, and that the door 
should be opened once a year, for a hundred years. It 
seems to have been his expectation to awake and arise ; 
but the allotted century has passed and his bones are 
still quiescent. 

How calmly they sleep — those warriors who once 
filled the world with the tumult of their deeds ! If you 
go into St. Mary's, in the Temple, you will stand above 
the dust of the Crusaders and see the beautiful copper 




Gresliam's Monument. 



effigies of them, recumbent on the marble pavement, and 
feel and know, as perhaps you never did before, the 
calm that follows the tempest. St. Mary's was built in 
1240 and restored in 1828. It would be difficult to find 
a lovelier specimen of Norman architecture — at once 
massive and airy, perfectly simple, yet rich with beauty, 
in every line and scroll. There is only one other 
church in Great Britain, it is said, which has, like this, a 



w 

ha 




Goidstnith's House. 



CHAP. XIV 



OLD CHURCHES OF LONDON 



185 



circular vestibule. The stained glass windows, both 
here and at St. Helen's, are very glorious. The organ at 
St. Mary's was selected by Jeffreys, afterwards infamous 
as the wicked judge. The pilgrim who pauses to muse 
at the grave of Goldsmith may often hear its solemn, 
mournful tones. I heard them thus, and was thinking 
of Dr. Johnson's tender words, when he first learned 
that Goldsmith was dead: " Poor Goldy was wild — very 
wild — but he is so no more." The room in which he 
died, a heart-broken man at only forty-six, was but a 
little way from the spot where he sleeps. 1 The noises of 
Fleet Street are heard there only as a distant murmur. 
But birds chirp over him, and leaves flutter down upon 
his tomb, and every breeze that sighs around the gray 
turrets of the ancient Temple breathes out his requiem. 

1 No. 2 Brick Court, Middle Temple. — In 1757-58 Goldsmith was em- 
ployed by a chemist, near Fish Street Hill. When he wrote his Inquiry 
into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe he was living in Green 
Arbour Court, " over Break-neck Steps." At a lodging in Wine Office Court, 
Fleet Street, he wrote The Vicar of Wakefield. Afterwards he had lodgings 
at Canonbury House, Islington, and in 1764, in the Library Staircase of the 
Inner Temple. <f 




1 *Gih< % ^ 



CWurtVl 1 




CHAPTER XV 



LITERARY SHRINES OF LONDON 




HE mind that can reverence historic asso- 
ciations needs no explanation of the charm 
that such associations possess. There are 
streets and houses in London which, for 
pilgrims of this class, are haunted with 
memories and hallowed with an imperishable light — 
that not even the dreary commonness of everyday life 
can quench or dim. Almost every great author in Eng- 
lish literature has here left behind him some personal 
trace, some relic that brings us at once into his living 
presence. In the time of Shakespeare, — of whom it 
may be noted that wherever you find him at all you find 
him in select and elegant neighbourhoods, — St. Helen's 
parish was a secluded and peaceful quarter of the town ; 
and there the poet had his residence, convenient to the 
theatre in Blackfriars, in which he is known to have 
owned a share. It is said that he dwelt at number 
134 Aldersgate Street (the house has been demolished), 
and in that region, — amid all the din of traffic and all 
the strange adjuncts of a new age, — those who love 

186 



chap, xv LITERARY SHRINES OF LONDON 187 

him are in his company. Milton was born in a court 
adjacent to Bread Street, Cheapside, and the explorer 
comes upon him as a resident in St. Bride's churchyard, 
— where the poet Lovelace was buried, — and at the 
house which is now No. 19 York Street, Westminster 
(in later times occupied by Bentham and by Hazlitt), 
and in Jewin Street, Aldersgate. When secretary to 
Cromwell he lived in Scotland Yard, where now is the 
headquarters of the London police. His last home was 
in Artillery Walk, Bunhill Fields, but the visitor to that 
spot finds it covered by the Artillery barracks. Walk- 
ing through King Street, Westminster, you will not 
forget Edmund Spenser, who died there, in grief and 
destitution, a victim to the same inhuman spirit of Irish 
ruffianism that is still disgracing humanity and troubling 
the peace of the world. Everybody remembers Ben 
Jonson's terse record of that calamity : " The Irish hav- 
ing robbed Spenser's goods and burnt his house and a 
little child new-born, he and his wife escaped, and after 
he died, for lack of bread, in King Street." Jonson him- 
self is closely and charmingly associated with places 
that may still be seen. He passed his boyhood near 
Charing Cross — having been born in Hartshorn Lane, 
now Northumberland Street — and went to the parish 
school of St. Martin-in-the-Fields ; and those who roam 
around Lincoln's Inn will call to mind that this great 
poet helped to build it — a trowel in one hand and 
Horace in the other. His residence, in his days of 
fame, was just outside of Temple Bar — but all that 
neighbourhood is new at the present time. 

The Mermaid, which he frequented — with Shake- 
speare, Fletcher, Herrick, Chapman, and Donne — was 



183 



SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 



in Bread Street, but no trace of it remains ; and a bank- 
ing-house stands now on the site of the Devil Tavern, in 
Fleet Street, where the Apollo Club, which he founded, 
used to meet. The famous inscription, " O rare Ben 
Jonson," is three times cut in the Abbey — once in 
Poets' Corner and twice in the north aisle where he 




A Bit from Clare Market. 

was buried, the smaller of the two slabs marking the 
place of his vertical grave. Dryden once dwelt in a 
narrow, dingy, quaint house, in Fetter Lane, — the 
street in which Dean Swift has placed the home of Gul- 
liver, and where now (1882) the famous Doomsday Book 
is kept, — but later he removed to a finer dwelling, in 
Gerrard Street, Soho, which was the scene of his death. 



xv LITERARY SHRINES OF LONDON 189 

Both buildings are marked with mural tablets and 
neither of them seems to have undergone much change. 
(The house in Fetter Lane is gone — 1891.) Edmund 
Burke's house, also in Gerrard Street, is a beer-shop ; 
but his memory hallows the place, and an inscription 
upon it proudly announces that here he lived. Dr. 
Johnson's house in Gough Square bears likewise a 
mural tablet, and, standing at its time-worn threshold, 
the visitor needs no effort of fancy to picture that un- 
couth figure shambling through the crooked lanes that 
lead into this queer, sombre, melancholy retreat. In 
that house he wrote the first Dictionary of the English 
language and the immortal letter to Lord Chesterfield. 
In Gough Square lived and died Hugh Kelly, dramatist, 
author of The School of Wives and The Man of Reason, 
and one of the friends of Goldsmith, at whose burial he 
was present. The historical antiquarian society that 
has marked many of the literary shrines of London has 
rendered a great service. The houses associated with 
Reynolds and Hogarth, in Leicester Square, Byron, in 
Holies Street, Benjamin Franklin and Peter the Great, 
in Craven Street, Campbell, in Duke Street, St. James's, 
Garrick, in the Adelphi Terrace, Michael Farraday, in 
Blandford Street, and Mrs. Siddons, in Baker Street, are 
but a few of the historic spots which are thus commem- 
orated. Much, however, remains to be done. One 
would like to know, for instance, in which room in " The 
Albany " it was that Byron wrote Lai r a} in which of the 

1 Byron was born at No. 34 Holies Street, Cavendish Square. While 
he was at school in Dulwich Grove his mother lived in a house in Sloane 
Terrace. Other houses associated with him are No. 8 St. James Street; a 
lodging in Bennet Street; No. 2 "The Albany" — a lodging that he 



190 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap, xv 

houses of Buckingham Street Coleridge had his lodging 
while he was translating Wallenstein; whereabouts in 
Bloomsbury Square was the residence of Akenside, who 
wrote The Pleasures of Imagination, and of Croly, who 
wrote Salathiel; or where it was that Gray lived, when 
he established himself close by Russell Square, in order 
to be one of the first — as he continued to be one of the 
most constant — students at the then newly opened Brit- 
ish Museum ( 1 759). These, and such as these, may seem 
trivial things ; but Nature has denied an unfailing source 
of innocent happiness to the man who can find no pleas- 
ure in them. For my part, when rambling in Fleet 
Street it is a special delight to remember even so slight 
an incident as that recorded of the author of the Elegy 
in a Country Churchyard, — that he once saw there his 
satirist, Dr. Johnson, rolling and puffing along the side- 
walk, and cried out to a friend, " Here comes Ursa 
Major." For the true lovers of literature "Ursa Major" 
walks oftener in Fleet Street to-day than any living man. 
A good thread of literary research might be profitably 
followed by him who should trace the footsteps of all 
the poets that have held, in England, the office of laure- 
ate. John Kay was laureate in the reign of Edward IV. ; 
Andrew Bernard in that of Henry VII. ; John Skelton 
in that of Henry VIII.; and Edmund Spenser in that 

rented of Lord Althorpe, and entered on March 28, 1814; and No. 
139 Piccadilly, where his daughter, Ada, was born, and where Lady Byron 
left him. This, at present, is the home of the genial scholar Sir Algernon 
Borthwick (1893). John Murray's house, where Byron's fragment of 
Autobiography was burned, is in Albemarle Street. Byron's body, when 
brought home from Greece, lay in state at No. 25 Great George Street, 
Westminster, before being taken north, to Hucknall-Torkard church, in 
Nottinghamshire, for burial. 








M! L 



VH 









rTPTTfo 








. J-Jtl|ifl)0 



192 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

of Elizabeth. Since then the succession has included 
the names of Samuel Daniel, Michael Drayton, Ben 
jonson, Sir William Davenant, John Dryden, Thomas 
Shadwell, Nahum Tate, Nicholas Rowe, Lawrence 
Eusden, Colley Cibber, William Whitehead, Thomas 
Wharton, Henry James Pye, Robert Southey, William 
Wordsworth, and Alfred Tennyson — who, until his 
death, in 1892, wore, in spotless renown, that 

" Laurel greener from the brows 
Of him that utter'd nothing base."" 

Most of those bards were intimately associated with 
London, and several of them are buried in the Abbey. 
It is, indeed, because so many storied names are writ- 
ten upon gravestones that the explorer of the old 
churches of London finds so rich a harvest of impres- 
sive association and lofty thought. Few persons visit 
them, and you are likely to find yourself comparatively 
alone in rambles of this kind. I went one morning 
into St. Martin — once "in the fields," now in one of 
the busiest thoroughfares at the centre of the city — 
and found there only a pew-opener preparing for the 
service, and an organist playing an anthem. It is a 
beautiful structure, with its graceful spire and its columns 
of weather-beaten stone, curiously stained in gray and 
sooty black, and it is almost as famous for theatrical 
names as St. Paul's, Covent Garden, or St. George's, 
Bloomsbury, or St. Clement Danes. Here, in a vault 
beneath the church, was buried the bewitching and 
affectionate Nell Gwyn ; here is the grave of James 
Smith, joint author with his brother Horace — who was 
buried at Tunbridge Wells — of The Rejected Addresses ; 



XV 



LITERARY SHRINES OF LONDON 



193 



here rests Yates, the original Sir Oliver Surface ; and 
here were laid the ashes of the romantic and sprightly 
Mrs. Centlivre, and of George Farquhar, whom 
neither youth, genius, patient 
labour, nor sterling achievement 
could save from a life of mis- 
fortune and an untimely and 
|fln§ piteous death. A cheerier asso- 
3» ciation of this church is with 
Thomas Moore, the poet of Ire- 







Gray's Inn Square. 



land, who was here married. At St. Giles-in-the-Fields, 
again, are the graves of George Chapman, who trans- 
lated Homer, Andrew Marvel, who wrote such lovely 



194 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap, xv 

lyrics of love, Rich, the manager, who brought out 
Gay's Beggar s Opera, and James Shirley, the fine old 
dramatist and poet, whose immortal couplet has been so 
often murmured in such solemn haunts as these — 

" Only the actions of the just 
Smell sweet and blossom in the dust." 

Shirley lived in Gray's Inn when he was writing his 
plays, and he was fortunate in the favour of queen Hen- 
rietta Maria, wife to Charles the First; but when the 
Puritan times arrived he fell into misfortune and poverty 
and became a school-teacher in Whitefriars. In 1666 
he was living in or near Fleet Street, and his home was 
one of the many dwellings that were destroyed in the 
great fire. Then he fled, with his wife, into the parish 
of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, where, overcome with grief 
and terror, they both died, within twenty-four hours of 
each other, and were buried in the same grave. 




CHAPTER XVI 



A HAUNT OF EDMUND KEAN 




O muse over the dust of those about whom 
we have read so much — the great actors, 
thinkers, and writers, the warriors and 
statesmen for whom the play is ended and 
the lights are put out — is to come very- 
near to them, and to realise more deeply than ever 
before their close relationship with our own humanity ; 
and we ought to be wiser and better for this experience. 
It is good, also, to seek out the favourite haunts of our 
heroes, and call them up as they were in their lives. 
One of the happiest accidents of a London stroll was 
the finding of the Harp Tavern, 1 in Russell Street, 
Covent Garden, near the stage door of Drury Lane 
theatre, which was the accustomed resort of Edmund 

1 An account of the Harp, in the Victuallers ' Gazette, says that this 
tavern has had within its doors every actor of note since the days of Gar- 
rick, and many actresses, also, of the latter part of the eighteenth century; 
and it mentions, as visitants there, Dora Jordan, Nance Oldfield, Anne 
Bracegirdle, Kitty Clive, Harriet Mellon, Barton Booth, Quin, Cibber, 
Macklin, Grimaldi, Eliza Vestris, and Miss Stephens — who became 
Countess of Essex. 



195 



196 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

Kean. Carpenters and masons were at work upon it 
when I entered, and it was necessary almost to creep 
amid heaps of broken mortar and rubbish beneath their 
scaffolds, in order to reach the interior rooms. Here, at 
the end of a narrow passage, was a little apartment, per- 
haps fifteen feet square, with a low ceiling and a bare 
floor, in which Kean habitually took his pleasure, in the 
society of fellow-actors and boon companions, long ago. 
A narrow, cushioned bench against the walls, a few 
small tables, a chair or two, a number of churchwarden 
pipes on the mantlepiece, and portraits of Disraeli and 
Gladstone, constituted the furniture. A panelled wain- 
scot and dingy red paper covered the walls, and a few 
cobwebs hung from the grimy ceiling. By this time 
the old room has been made neat and comely; but then 
it bore the marks of hard usage and long neglect, and 
it seemed all the more interesting for that reason. 

Kean's seat is at the right, as you enter, and just 
above it a mural tablet designates the spot, — which is 
still further commemorated by a death-mask of the 
actor, placed on a little shelf of dark wood and covered 
with glass. No better portrait could be desired ; cer- 
tainly no truer one exists. In life this must have been 
a glorious face. The eyes are large and prominent, the 
brow is broad and fine, the mouth wide and obviously 
sensitive, the chin delicate, and the nose long, well set, 
and indicative of immense force of character. The 
whole expression of the face is that of refinement and 
of great and desolate sadness. Kean, as is known from 
the testimony of one who acted with him, 1 was always 

1 The mother of Jefferson, the comedian, described Edmund Kean in 
this way. She was a member of the company at the Walnut Street 



xvi A HAUNT OF EDMUND KEAN 197 

at his best in passages of pathos. To hear him speak 
Othello's farewell was to hear the perfect music of 
heart-broken despair. To see him when, as The Stran- 
ger, he listened to the song, was to see the genuine, 
absolute reality of hopeless sorrow. He could, of course, 
thrill his hearers in the ferocious outbursts of Richard 
and Sir Giles, but it was in tenderness and grief that he 
was supremely great ; and no one will wonder at that 
who looks upon his noble face — so eloquent of self- 
conflict and suffering — even in this cold and colourless 
mask of death. It is easy to judge and condemn the 
sins of a weak, passionate humanity ; but when we 
think of such creatures of genius as Edmund Kean and 
Robert Burns, we ought to consider what demons in 
their own souls those wretched men were forced to 
fight, and by what agonies they expiated their vices and 
errors. This little tavern-room tells the whole mournful 
story, with death to point the moral, and pity to breathe 
its sigh of unavailing regret. 

Many of the present frequenters of the Harp are 
elderly men, whose conversation is enriched with 
memories of the stage and with ample knowledge and 
judicious taste in literature and art. They naturally 
speak with pride of Kean's association with their 
favourite resort. Often in that room the eccentric 
genius has put himself in pawn, to exact from the 
manager of Drury Lane theatre the money needed to 

Theatre, Philadelphia, when he acted there, and it was she who sang for 
him, when he acted The Stranger, the well-known lines, by Sheridan, — 

" I have a silent sorrow here, 
A grief I'll ne'er impart ; 
It breathes no sigh, it sheds no tear, 
But it consumes my heart." 



198 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

relieve the wants of some brother actor. Often his 
voice has been heard there, in the songs that he sang 
with so much feeling and sweetness and such homely 
yet beautiful skill. In the circles of the learned and 
courtly he never was really at home ; but here he filled 
the throne and ruled the kingdom of the revel, and 
here no doubt every mood of his mind, from high 
thought and generous emotion to misanthropical bit- 
terness and vacant levity, found its unfettered expres- 
sion. They show you a broken panel in the high 
wainscot, which was struck and smashed by a pewter pot 
that he hurled at the head of a person who had given 
him offence ; and they tell you at the same time, — as, 
indeed, is historically true, — that he was the idol of 
his comrades, the first in love, pity, sympathy, and kind- 
ness, and would turn his back, any day, for the least of 
them, on the nobles who sought his companionship. 
There is no better place than this in which to study 
the life of Edmund Kean. Old men have been met 
with here who saw him on the stage, and even acted 
with him. The room is the weekly meeting-place and 
habitual nightly tryst of an ancient club, called the City 
of Lushington, which has existed since the days of the 
Regency, and of which these persons are members. 
The City has its Mayor, Sheriff, insignia, record-book, 
and system of ceremonials ; and much of wit, wisdom, 
and song may be enjoyed at its civic feasts. The names 
of its four wards — Lunacy, Suicide, Poverty, and Juni- 
per — are written up in the four corners of the room, 
and whoever joins must select his ward. Sheridan was 
a member of it, and so was the Regent ; and the present 
landlord of the Harp (Mr. M'Pherson) preserves among 



xvi A HAUNT OF EDMUND KEAN 199 

his relics the chairs in which those gay companions sat, 
when the author presided over the initiation of the 
prince. It is thought that this club grew out of the 
society of The Wolves, which was formed by Kean's 
adherents, when the elder Booth arose to disturb his 
supremacy upon the stage. But there is no malice in 
it now. Its purposes are simply convivial and literary, 
and its tone is that of thorough good-will. 1 

One of the gentlest and most winning traits in the 
English character is its instinct of companionship as to 
literature and art. Since the days of the Mermaid the 
authors and actors of London have dearly loved and 
deeply enjoyed such odd little fraternities of wit as are 
typified, not inaptly, by the City of Lushington. There 
are no rosier hours in my memory than those that were 
passed, between midnight and morning, in the cosy 
clubs in London. And when dark days come, and foes 
harass, and the troubles of life annoy, it will be sweet 
to think that in still another sacred retreat of friendship, 
across the sea, the old armour is gleaming in the festal 
lights, where one of the gentlest spirits that ever wore 
the laurel of England's love smiles kindly on his com- 
rades and seems to murmur the charm of English 
hospitality — 

" Let no one take beyond this threshold hence 
Words uttered here in friendship's confidence." 

1 A coloured print of this room may be found in that eccentric book 
The Life of an Actor, by Pierce Egan : 1825. 




CHAPTER XVII 



STOKE-POGIS AND THOMAS GRAY 




T is a cool afternoon in July, and the 
shadows are falling eastward on fields of 
waving grain and lawns of emerald velvet. 
Overhead a few light clouds are drifting, 
and the green boughs of the great elms 
are gently stirred by a breeze from the west. Across 
one of the more distant fields a flock> of sable rooks — 
some of them fluttering and cawing — wings its slow 
and melancholy flight. There is the sound of the 
whetting of a scythe, and, near by, the twittering of 
many birds upon a cottage roof. On either side of the 
country road, which runs like a white rivulet through 
banks of green, the hawthorn hedges are shining and 
the bright sod is spangled with all the wild -flowers 
of an English summer. An odour of lime-trees and 
of new -mown hay sweetens the air for many miles 
around. Far off, on the horizon's verge, just glimmer- 
ing through the haze, rises the imperial citadel of Wind- 
sor. And close at hand a little child points to a gray 



chap, xvii STOKE-POGIS AND THOMAS GRAY 201 

spire x peering out of a nest of ivy, and tells me that 
this is Stoke-Pogis church. 

If peace dwells anywhere upon the earth its dwell- 
ing-place is here. You come into this little church- 
yard by a pathway across the park and through a 
wooden turnstile ; and in one moment the whole world 
is left behind and forgotten. Here are the nodding 
elms ; here is the yew-tree's shade ; here " heaves the 
turf in many a mouldering heap." All these graves 
seem very old. The long grass waves over them, 
and some of the low stones that mark them are entirely 
shrouded with ivy. Many of the " frail memorials " 
are made of wood. None of them is neglected or for- 
lorn, but all of them seem to have been scattered here, 
in that sweet disorder which is the perfection of rural 
loveliness. There never, of course, could have been 
any thought of creating this effect; yet here it re- 
mains, to win your heart forever. And here, amid this 
mournful beauty, the little church itself nestles close to 
the ground, while every tree that waves its branches 
around it, and every vine that clambers on its surface, 
seems to clasp it in the arms of love. Nothing breaks 
the silence but the sighing of the wind in the great yew- 
tree at the church door, — beneath which was the poet's 
favourite seat, and where the brown needles, falling, 
through many an autumn, have made a dense carpet on 
the turf. Now and then there is a faint rustle in the 
ivy ; a fitful bird-note serves but to deepen the stillness ; 
and from a rose-tree near at hand a few leaves flutter 
down, in soundless benediction on the dust beneath. 

1 In Gray's time there was no spire on the church — nor is the spire an 
improvement to the tower. 



chap, xvii STOKE-POGIS AND THOMAS GRAY 203 

Gray was laid in the same grave with his mother, 
" the careful, tender mother of many children, one 
alone of whom," as he wrote upon her gravestone, 
" had the misfortune to survive her." Their tomb — a 
low, oblong, brick structure, covered with a large slab 
— stands a few feet away from the church wall, upon 
which is a small tablet to denote its place. The poet's 
name has not been inscribed above him. There was 
no need here of " storied urn or animated bust." The 
place is his monument, and the majestic Elegy — giving 
to the soul of the place a form of seraphic beauty and 
a voice of celestial music — is his immortal epitaph. 

" There scattered oft, the earliest of ye Year, 

By hands unseen are showers of vi'lets found ; 
The Redbreast loves to build & warble there, 
And little Footsteps lightly print the ground. 11 

There is a monument to Gray in Stoke Park, about 
two hundred yards from the church ; but it seems com- 
memorative of the builder rather than the poet. They 
intend to set a memorial window in the church, to 
honour him, and the visitor finds there a money-box for 
the reception of contributions in aid of this pious design. 
Nothing will be done amiss that serves to direct closer 
attention to his life. It was one of the best lives ever 
recorded in the history of literature. It was a life sin- 
gularly pure, noble, and beautiful. In two qualities, 
sincerity and reticence, it was exemplary almost beyond 
a parallel ; and those are qualities that literary character 
in the present day has great need to acquire. Gray 
was averse to publicity. He did not sway by the 
censure of other men ; neither did he need their admira- 



204 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

tion as his breath of life. Poetry, to him, was a great 
art, and he added nothing to literature until he had first 
made it as nearly perfect as it could be made by the 
thoughtful, laborious exertion of his best powers, super- 
added to the spontaneous impulse and flow of his genius. 
More voluminous writers, Charles Dickens among the 
rest, have sneered at him because he wrote so little. 
The most colossal form of human complacency is that 
of the individual who thinks all other creatures inferior 
who happen to be unlike himself. This reticence on 
the part of Gray was, in fact, the emblem of his sin- 
cerity and the compelling cause of his imperishable 
renown. There is a better thing than the great man 
who is always speaking ; and that is the great man 
who only speaks when he has a great word to say. 
Gray has left only a few poems ; but of his principal 
works each is perfect in its kind, supreme and unap- 
proachable. He did not test merit by reference to ill- 
formed and capricious public opinion, but he wrought 
according to the highest standards of art that learning 
and taste could furnish. His letters form an English 
classic. There is no purer prose in existence ; there is 
not much that is so pure. But the crowning glory of 
Gray's nature, the element that makes it so impressive, 
the charm that brings the pilgrim to Stoke-Pogis church 
to muse upon it, was the self-poised, sincere, and lovely 
exaltation of its contemplative spirit. He was a man 
whose conduct of life would, first of all, purify, expand, 
and adorn the temple of his own soul, out of which 
should afterward flow, in their own free way, those 
choral harmonies that soothe, guide, and exalt the 
human race. He lived before he wrote. The soul of 



xvii STOKE-POGIS AND THOMAS GRAY 205 

the Elegy is the soul of the man. It was his thought 
— which he has somewhere expressed in better words 
than these — that human beings are only at their best 
while such feelings endure as are engendered when 
death has just taken from us the objects of our love. 
That was the point of view from which he habitually 
looked upon the world ; and no man who has learned 
the lessons of experience can doubt that he was right. 

Gray was twenty-six years old when he wrote the 
first draft of the Elegy. He began that poem in 1742, 
at Stoke-Pogis, and he finished and published it in 
1 75 1. No visitor to this churchyard can miss either 
its inspiration or its imagery. The poet has been dead 
more than a hundred years, but the scene of his ram- 
bles and reveries has suffered no material change. 
One of his yew-trees, indeed, much weakened with age, 
was some time since blown down, in a storm, and its 
fragments have been carried away. The picturesque 
manor house not far distant was once the home of 
Admiral Penn, father of William Penn the famous 
Quaker. 1 All the trees of the region have, of course, 
waxed and expanded, — not forgetting the neighbouring 

1 William Penn and his children are buried in the little Jordans grave- 
yard, not many miles away. The visitor to Stoke-Pogis should not omit a 
visit to Upton church, Burnham village, and Binfield. Pope lived at Bin- 
field when he wrote his poem on Windsor Forest. Upton claims to have 
had a share in the inspiration of the Elegy, but Stoke-Pogis was unques- 
tionably his place of residence when he wrote it. Langley Marish ought to 
be visited also, and Horton — where Milton wrote " L' Allegro," " II Pen- 
seroso," and " Comus." Chalfont St. Peter is accessible, where still is 
standing the house in which Milton finished Paradise Lost and began 
Paradise Regained ; and from there a short drive will take you to Beacons- 
field, where you may see Edmund Burke's tablet, in the church, and the 
monument to Waller, in the churchvard. 



206 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

beeches of Burnham, among which he loved to wander, 
and where he might often have been found, sitting with 
his book, at some gnarled wreath of " old fantastic 
roots." But in its general characteristics, its rustic 
homeliness and peaceful beauty, this " glimmering land- 
scape," immortalised in his verse, is the same on which 
his living eyes have looked. There was no need to 
seek for him in any special spot. The house in which 
he once lived might, no doubt, be discovered ; but every 
nook and vista, every green lane and upland lawn and 
ivy-mantled tower of this delicious solitude is haunted 
with his presence. 

The night is coming on and the picture will soon be 
dark ; but never while memory lasts can it fade out of the 
heart. What a blessing would be ours, if only we could 
hold forever that exaltation of the spirit, that sweet, re- 
signed serenity, that pure freedom from all the passions 
of nature and all the cares of life, which comes upon 
us in such a place as this ! Alas, and again alas ! Even 
with the thought this golden mood begins to melt away ; 
even with the thought comes our dismissal from its 
influence. Nor will it avail us anything now to linger 
at the shrine. Fortunate is he, though in bereavement 
and regret, who parts from beauty while yet her kiss is 
warm upon his lips, — waiting not for the last farewell 
word, hearing not the last notes of the music, seeing 
not the last gleams of sunset as the light dies from the 
sky. It was a sad parting, but the memory of the place 
can never now be despoiled of its loveliness. As I write 
these words I stand again in the cool and dusky silence 
of the poet's church, with its air of stately age and its 
fragrance of cleanliness, while the light of the western 



STOKE-POGIS AND THOMAS GRAY 



207 



sun, broken into rays of gold and ruby, streams through 
the painted windows and softly falls upon the quaint 
little galleries and decorous pews ; and, looking forth 
through the low, arched door, I see the dark and melan- 
choly boughs of the dreaming yew-tree, and, nearer, a 
shadow of rippling leaves in the clear sunshine of the 
churchway path. And all the time a gentle voice is 
whispering 



[g, in the chambers of thought 



No farther seek his merits to disclose, 
Or draw his frailties from their dread abode 

(There they alike in trembling hope repose), 
The bosom of his Father and his God. 11 





CHAPTER XVIII 



AT THE GRAVE OF COLERIDGE 



m 


m 







MONG the deeply meditative, melodious, 
and eloquent poems of Wordsworth there 
is one — about the burial of Ossian — 
that glances at the question of fitness in 
a place of sepulchre. Not always, for 
the illustrious dead, has the final couch of rest 
been rightly chosen. We think with resignation, 
and with a kind of pride, of Keats and Shelley in 
the little Protestant burial-ground at Rome. Every 
heart is touched at the spectacle of Garrick and John- 
son sleeping side by side in Westminster Abbey. It 
was right that the dust of Dean Stanley should mingle 
with the dust of poets and of kings ; and to see — as 
the present writer did, only a little while ago — fresh 
flowers on the stone that covers him, in the chapel of 
Henry the Seventh, was to feel a tender gladness and 
solemn content. Shakespeare's grave, in the chancel of 
Stratford church, awakens the same ennobling awe and 
melancholy pleasure ; and it is with kindred feeling that 
you linger at the tomb of Gray. But who can be con- 

208 



chap, xvin AT THE GRAVE OF COLERIDGE 209 

tent that poor Letitia Landon should sleep beneath the 
pavement of a barrack, with soldiers trampling over 
her dust? One might almost think, sometimes, that the 
spirit of calamity, which follows certain persons through- 
out the whole of life, had pursued them even in death, 
to haunt about their repose and to mar all the gentle- 
ness of association that ought to hallow it. Chatterton, 
a pauper and a suicide, was huddled into a workhouse 
graveyard, the very place of which — in Shoe Lane, 
covered now by Farringdon Market — has disappeared. 
Otway, miserable in his love for Elizabeth Barry, the 
actress, and said to have starved to death in the Minories, 
near the Tower of London, was laid in a vault of St. 
Clement Danes, in the middle of the Strand, where 
never the green leaves rustle, but where the roar of the 
mighty city pours on in continual tumult. That church 
holds also the remains of William Mountfort, the actor, 
slain in a brawl by Lord Mohun ; of Nat Lee, " the 
mad poet " ; of George Powell, the tragedian, of brilliant 
and deplorable memory; and of the handsome Hilcle- 
brand Horden, cut off by a violent death in the spring- 
time of his youth. Hildebrand Horden was the son of 
a clergyman of Twickenham and lived in the reign of 
William and Mary. Dramatic chronicles say that he was 
possessed of great talent as an actor, and of remark- 
able personal beauty. He was stabbed, in a quarrel, at 
the Rose Tavern ; and after he had been laid out for 
the grave, such was the lively feminine interest in his 
handsome person, many ladies came, some masked and 
others openly, to view him in his shroud. This is men- 
tioned in Colley Cibber's Apology. Charles Coffey, the 
dramatist, author of The Devil upon Two Sticks, and 



210 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

other plays, lies in the vaults of St. Clement ; as like- 
wise does Thomas Rymer, historiographer for William 
III., successor to Shadwell, and author of Foedera, in 
seventeen volumes. In the church of St. Clement you 
may see the pew in which Dr. Johnson habitually sat 
when he attended divine service there. It was his 
favourite church. The pew is in the gallery ; and to 
those who honour the passionate integrity and fervent, 
devout zeal of the stalwart old champion of letters, it 
is indeed a sacred shrine. Henry Mossop, one of the 
stateliest of stately actors, perishing, by slow degrees, 
of penury and grief, — which he bore in proud silence, 
— found a refuge, at last, in the barren gloom of Chelsea 
churchyard. Theodore Hook, the cheeriest spirit of his 
time, the man who filled every hour of life with the sun- 
shine of his wit and was wasted and degraded by his 
own brilliancy, rests, close by Bishop Sherlock, in Ful- 
ham churchyard, — one of the dreariest spots in the 
suburbs of London. Perhaps it does not much signify, 
when once the play is over, in what oblivion our crum- 
bling relics are hidden away. Yet to most human 
creatures these are sacred things, and many a loving 
heart, for all time to come, will choose a consecrated spot 
for the repose of the dead, and will echo the tender 
words of Longfellow, — so truly expressive of a univer- 
sal and reverent sentiment — 

u Take them, O Grave, and let them lie 
Folded upon thy narrow shelves, 
As garments by the soul laid by 
And precious only to ourselves." 

One of the most impressive of the many literary 
pilgrimages that I have made was that which brought 



xvni AT THE GRAVE OF COLERIDGE 211 

me to the house in which Coleridge died, and the place 
where he was buried. The student needs not to be 
told that this poet, born in 1772, the year after Gray's 
death, bore the white lilies of pure literature till 1834, 
when he too entered into his rest. The last nineteen 
years of the life of Coleridge were spent in a house at 
Highgate ; and there, within a few steps of each other, 
the visitor may behold his dwelling and his tomb. The 
house is one in a block of dwellings, situated in what is 
called the Grove — a broad, embowered street, a little 
way from the centre of the village. There are gardens 
attached to these houses, both in the front and the rear, 
and the smooth and peaceful roadside walks in the 
Grove itself are pleasantly shaded by elms of noble size 
and abundant foliage. These were young trees when 
Coleridge saw them, and all this neighbourhood, in his 
day, was but thinly settled. Looking from his chamber 
window he could see the dusky outlines of sombre Lon- 
don, crowned with the dome of St. Paul's on the south- 
ern horizon, while, more near, across a fertile and 
smiling valley, the gray spire of Hampstead church 
would bound his prospect, rising above the verdant 
woodland of Caen. 1 In front were beds of flowers, and 
all around he might hear the songs of birds that filled 
the fragrant air with their happy, careless music. Not 
far away stood the old church of Highgate, long since 
destroyed, in which he used to worship, and close by 

1 "Come in the first stage, so as either to walk, or to be driven in Mr. 
Gilman's gig, to Caen wood and its delicious groves and alleys, the finest 
in England, a grand cathedral aisle of giant lime-trees, Pope's favourite 
composition walk, when with the old Earl." — Coleridge to Crabb Robinson. 
Highgate, June 181 7 



212 



SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 



CHAP. 



was the Gate House inn, primitive, quaint, and cosy, 
which still is standing, to comfort the weary traveller 
with its wholesome hospitality. Highgate, with all its 

' rural peace, must 
have been a bus- 
tling place in the 
old times, for all 
the travel went 
through it that passed 
either into or out of 
London by the great 
north road, — that road 
in which Whittington 
heard the prophetic sum- 
mons of the bells, and where 
may still be seen, suitably 
and rightly marked, the site of the 
stone on which he sat to rest. 
Here, indeed, the coaches used to 
halt, either to feed or to change 
horses, and here the many neglected 
little taverns still remaining, with 
their odd names and their swinging 
signs, testify to the discarded cus- 
toms of a bygone age. Some years 
ago a new road was cut, so that 
travellers might wind around the hill, and avoid climb- 
ing the steep ascent to the village ; and since then the 
grass has begun to grow in the streets. But such bustle 
as once enlivened the solitude of Highgate could never 
have been otherwise than agreeable diversion to its 
inhabitants ; while for Coleridge himself, as we can well 




The White Hart. 



xvin AT THE GRAVE OF COLERIDGE 213 

imagine, the London coach was welcome indeed, that 
brought to his door such well-loved friends as Charles 
Lamb, Joseph Henry Green, Crabb Robinson, Words- 
worth, or Talfourd. 

To this retreat the author of The Ancient Mariner 
withdrew in 1815, to live with his friend James Gilman, 
a surgeon, who had undertaken to rescue him from the 
demon of opium, but who, as De Quincey intimates, 
was lured by the poet into the service of the very fiend 
whom both had striven to subdue. It was his last 
refuge, and he never left it till he was released from 
life. As you ramble in that quiet neighbourhood your 
fancy will not fail to conjure up his placid figure, — the 
silver hair, the pale face, the great, luminous, changeful 
blue eyes, the somewhat portly form clothed in black 
raiment, the slow, feeble walk, the sweet, benignant 
manner, the voice that was perfect melody, and the 
inexhaustible talk that was the flow of a golden sea of 
eloquence and wisdom. Coleridge was often seen walk- 
ing there, with a book in his hand ; and the children of 
the village knew him and loved him. His presence is 
impressed forever upon the place, to haunt and to hallow 
it. He was a very great man. The wings of his imagi- 
nation wave easily in the opal air of the highest heaven. 
The power and majesty of his thought are such as estab- 
lish forever in the human mind the conviction of per- 
sonal immortality. Yet how forlorn the ending that 
this stately soul was enforced to make ! For more than 
thirty years he was the slave of opium. It blighted his 
home ; it alienated his wife ; it ruined his health ; it 
made him utterly wretched. " I have been, through a 
large portion of my later life," he wrote, in 1834, "a 



214 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap, xvih 

sufferer, sorely afflicted with bodily pains, languor, and 
manifold infirmities." But behind all this, — more 
dreadful still and harder to bear, — was he not the slave 
of some ingrained perversity of the mind itself, some 
helpless and hopeless irresolution of character, some 
enervating spell of that sublime yet pitiable dejection 
of Hamlet, which kept him forever at war with himself, 
and, last of all, cast him out upon the homeless ocean 
of despair, to drift away into ruin and death ? There 
are shapes more awful than his, in the records of liter- 
ary history, — the ravaged, agonising form of Swift, for 
instance, and the wonderful, desolate face of Byron ; 
but there is no figure more forlorn and pathetic. 

This way the memory of Coleridge came upon me, 
standing at his grave. He should have been laid in 
some wild, free place, where the grass could grow above 
him and the trees could wave their branches over his 
head. They placed him in a ponderous tomb, of gray 
stone, in Highgate churchyard, and in later times they 
have reared a new building above it, — the grammar- 
school of the village, — so that now the tomb, fenced 
round with iron, is in a cold, barren, gloomy crypt, ac- 
cessible indeed from the churchyard, through several 
arches, but grim and doleful in all its surroundings ; as 
if the evil and cruel fate that marred his life were still 
triumphant over his ashes. 




CHAPTER XIX 



ON BARNET BATTLE-FIELD 



mm 



N England, as elsewhere, every historic 
spot is occupied ; and of course it some- 
times happens, at such a spot, that its 
association is marred and its sentiment 
almost destroyed by the presence of the 
persons and the interests of to-day. The visitor to 
such places must carry with him not only knowledge 
and sensibility but imagination and patience. He will 
not find the way strewn with roses nor the atmosphere 
of poetry ready-made for his enjoyment. That atmos- 
phere, indeed, for the most part — especially in the 
cities — he must himself supply. Relics do not robe 
themselves for exhibition. The Past is utterly indiffer- 
ent to its worshippers. All manner of little obstacles, 
too, will arise before the pilgrim, to thwart him in his 
search. The mental strain and bewilderment, the inev- 
itable physical weariness, the soporific influence of the 
climate, the tumult of the streets, the frequent and dis- 
heartening spectacle of poverty, squalor, and vice, the 
capricious and untimely rain, the inconvenience of long 

215 



216 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

distances, the ill-timed arrival and consequent disap- 
pointment, the occasional nervous sense of loneliness and 
insecurity, the inappropriate boor, the ignorant, garru- 
lous porter, the extortionate cabman, and the jeering 
bystander — all these must be regarded with resolute 
indifference by him who would ramble, pleasantly and 
profitably, in the footprints of English history. Every- 
thing depends, in other words, upon the eyes with 
which you observe and the spirit which you impart. 
Never was a keener truth uttered than in the couplet 
of Wordsworth — 

" Minds that have nothing to confer 
Find little to perceive. 11 

To the philosophic stranger, however, even this 
prosaic occupancy of historic places is not without 
its pleasurable, because humorous, significance. Such 
an observer in England will sometimes be amused as 
well as impressed by a sudden sense of the singular 
incidental position into which — partly through the 
lapse of years, and partly through a peculiarity of 
national character — the scenes of famous events, not 
to say the events themselves, have gradually drifted. 
I thought of this one night, when, in Whitehall Gar- 
dens, I was looking at the statue of James the Second, 
and a courteous policeman came up and silently turned 
the light of his bull's-eye upon the inscription. A 
scene of more incongruous elements, or one suggestive 
of a more serio-comic contrast, could not be imagined. 
I thought of it again when standing on the village 
green near Barnet, and viewing, amid surroundings 
both pastoral and ludicrous, the column which there 



xix ON BARNET BATTLE-FIELD 217 

commemorates the defeat and death of the great 
Earl of Warwick, and, consequently, the final tri- 
umph of the Crown over the last of the Barons of 
England. 

It was toward the close of a cool summer day, and of 
a long drive through the beautiful hedgerows of sweet 
and verdurous Middlesex, that I came to the villages of 
Barnet and Hadley, and went over the field of King 
Edward's victory, — that fatal glorious field, on which 
Gloster showed such resolute valour, and where Neville, 
supreme and magnificent in disaster, fought on foot, to 
make sure that himself might go down in the stormy death 
of all his hopes. More than four hundred years have 
drifted by since that misty April morning when the 
star of Warwick was quenched in blood, and ten thou- 
sand men were slaughtered to end the strife between the 
Barons and the Crown ; yet the results of that conflict 
are living facts in the government of England now, and 
in the fortunes of her inhabitants. If you were unaware 
of the solid simplicity and proud reticence of the Eng- 
lish character, — leading it to merge all its shining 
deeds in one continuous fabric of achievement, like 
jewels set in a cloth of gold, — you might expect to find 
this spot adorned with a structure of more than common 
splendour. What you actually do find there is a plain 
monolith, standing in the middle of a common, at the 
junction of several roads, — the chief of which are 
those leading to Hatfield and St. Albans, in Hertford- 
shire, — and on one side of this column you may read, 
in letters of faded black, the comprehensive statement 
that " Here was fought the famous battle between 
Edward the Fourth and the Earl of Warwick, April 






■- £ 




&'£*,'■ 









Column on Barnet Battle-Field. 



chap, xix ON BARNET BATTLE-FIELD 219 

14th, anno 1471, in which the Earl was defeated and 
slain." 1 

In my reverie, standing at the foot of this humble, 
weather-stained monument, I saw the long range of 
Barnet hills, mantled with grass and flowers and with 
the golden haze of a morning in spring, swarming with 
gorgeous horsemen and glittering with spears and ban- 
ners ; and I heard the vengeful clash of arms, the hor- 
rible neighing of maddened steeds, the furious shouts 
of onset, and all the nameless cries and groans of battle, 
commingled in a thrilling yet hideous din. Here rode 
King Edward, intrepid, handsome, and stalwart, with 
his proud, cruel smile and his long, yellow hair. There 
Warwick swung his great two-handed sword, and mowed 
his foes like grain. And there the fiery form of Richard, 
splendid in burnished steel, darted like the scorpion, 
dealing death at every blow ; till at last, in fatal mis- 
chance, the sad star of Oxford, assailed by its own 
friends, was swept out of the field, and the fight drove, 
raging, into the valleys of Hadley. How strangely, 
though, did this fancied picture contrast with the actual 
scene before me ! At a little distance, all around the 
village green, the peaceful, embowered cottages kept 
their sentinel watch. Over the careless, straggling 
grass went the shadow of the passing cloud. Not a 
sound was heard, save the rustle of leaves and the low 
laughter of some little children, playing near the 
monument. Close by and at rest was a flock of geese, 
couched upon the cool earth, and, as their custom is, 
supremely contented with themselves and all the world. 

1 The words " stick no bills " have been intrusively added, just below 
this inscription. 



220 



SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND 



CHAI\ XIX 



And at the foot of the column, stretched out at his full 
length, in tattered garments that scarcely covered his 
nakedness, reposed the British labourer, fast asleep 
upon the sod. No more Wars of the Roses now ; but 
calm retirement, smiling plenty, cool western winds, and 
sleep and peace — 

u With a red rose and a white rose 
Leaning, nodding at the wall. 11 




Farm-house. 




CHAPTER XX 



A GLIMPSE OF CANTERBURY 




NE of the most impressive spots on earth, 
and one that especially teaches — with 
silent, pathetic eloquence and solemn 
admonition — the great lesson of con- 
trast, the incessant flow of the ages and 
the inevitable decay and oblivion of the past, is the 
ancient city of Canterbury. Years and not merely days 
of residence there are essential to the adequate and 
right comprehension of that wonderful place. Yet 
even an hour passed among its shrines will teach 
you, as no printed word has ever taught, the meas- 
ureless power and the sublime beauty of a perfect 
religious faith ; while, as you stand and meditate in the 
shadow of the gray cathedral walls, the pageant of a 
thousand years of history will pass before you like a 
dream. The city itself, with its bright, swift river (the 
Stour), its opulence of trees and flowers, its narrow 
winding streets, its numerous antique buildings, its 
many towers, its fragments of ancient wall and gate, 
its formal decorations, its air of perfect cleanliness and 

221 



chap, xx A GLIMPSE OF CANTERBURY 223 

thoughtful gravity, its beautiful, umbrageous suburbs, 

— where the scarlet of the poppies and the russet red 
of the clover make one vast rolling sea of colour and of 
fragrant delight, — and, to crown all, its stately char- 
acter of wealth without ostentation and industry without 
tumult, must prove to you a deep and satisfying com- 
fort. But, through all this, pervading and surmounting 
it all, the spirit of the place pours in upon your heart, 
and floods your whole being with the incense and organ 
music of passionate, jubilant devotion. 

It was not superstition that reared those gorgeous 
fanes of worship which still adorn, even while they no 
longer consecrate, the ecclesiastic cities of the old world. 
In the age of Augustine, Dunstan, and Ethelnoth human- 
ity had begun to feel its profound and vital need of a 
sure and settled reliance on religious faith. The drift- 
ing spirit, worn with sorrow, doubt, and self-conflict, 
longed to be at peace — longed for a refuge equally 
from the evils and tortures of its own condition and the 
storms and perils of the world. In that longing it 
recognised its immortality and heard the voice of its 
Divine Parent; and out of the ecstatic joy and utter 
abandonment of its new-born, passionate, responsive 
faith, it built and consecrated those stupendous temples, 

— rearing them with all its love no less than all its 
riches and all its power. There was no wealth that it 
would not give, no toil that it would not perform, and 
no sacrifice that it would not make, in the accomplish- 
ment of its sacred task. It was grandly, nobly, terribly 
in earnest, and it achieved a work that is not only sub- 
lime in its poetic majesty but measureless in the scope 
and extent of its moral and spiritual influence. It has 




Butchery Lane, Canterbury. 



chap, xx A GLIMPSE OF CANTERBURY 225 

left to succeeding ages not only a legacy of permanent 
beauty, not only a sublime symbol of religious faith, but 
an everlasting monument to the loveliness and greatness 
that are inherent in human nature. No creature with 
a human heart in his bosom can stand in such a build- 
ing as Canterbury cathedral without feeling a greater 
love and reverence than he ever felt before, alike for 
God and man. 

On a day (July 27, 1882) when a class of the boys of 
the King's School of Canterbury was graduated the 
present writer chanced to be a listener to the impressive 
and touching sermon that was preached before them, in 
the cathedral ; wherein they were tenderly admonished 
to keep unbroken their associations with their school- 
days and to remember the lessons of the place itself. 
That counsel must have sunk deep into every mind. It 
is difficult to understand how any person reared amid 
such scenes and relics could ever cast away their hal- 
lowing influence. Even to the casual visitor the bare 
thought of the historic treasures that are garnered in 
this temple is, by itself, sufficient to implant in the 
bosom a memorable and lasting awe. For more than 
twelve hundred years the succession of the Archbishops 
of Canterbury has remained substantially unbroken. 
There have been ninety-three " primates of all Eng- 
land," of whom fifty-three were buried in the cathedral, 
and here the tombs of fifteen of them are still visi- 
ble. Here was buried the sagacious, crafty, inflexible, 
indomitable Henry the Fourth, — that Hereford whom 
Shakespeare has described and interpreted with match- 
less, immortal eloquence, — and here, cut off in the 
morning of his greatness, and lamented to this day in 



226 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap, xx 

the hearts of the English people, was laid the body of 
Edward the Black Prince, who to a dauntless valour 
and terrible prowess in war added a high-souled, hu- 
man, and tender magnanimity in conquest, and whom 
personal virtues and shining public deeds united to 
make the ideal hero of chivalry. In no other way than 
by personal observance of such memorials can historic 
reading be invested with a perfect and permanent 
reality. Over the tomb of the Black Prince, with its 
fine recumbent effigy of gilded brass, hang the gaunt- 
lets that he wore ; and they tell you that his sword for- 
merly hung there, but that Oliver Cromwell — who 
revealed his iconoclastic and unlovely character in mak- 
ing a stable of this cathedral — carried it away. Close 
at hand is the tomb of the wise, just, and gentle Car- 
dinal Pole, simply inscribed " Blessed are the dead 
which die in the Lord " ; and you may touch a little, 
low mausoleum of gray stone, in which are the ashes of 
John Morton, that Bishop of Ely from whose garden in 
Holborn the strawberries were brought for the Duke of 
Gloster, on the day when he condemned the accom- 
plished Hastings, and who " fled to Richmond," in good 
time, from the standard of the dangerous Protector. 
Standing there, I could almost hear the resolute, scorn- 
ful voice of Richard, breathing out, in clear, implacable 
accents — 

" Ely with Richmond troubles me more near 
Than Buckingham and his rash-levied strength. 1 ' 

The astute Morton, when Bosworth was over and 
Richmond had assumed the crown and Bourchier had 
died, was made Archbishop of Canterbury ; and as 



228 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

such, at a great age, he passed away. A few hundred 
yards from his place of rest, in a vault beneath the 
Church of St. Dunstan, is the head of Sir Thomas 
More (the body being in St. Peter's, at the Tower of 
London), who in his youth had been a member of 
Morton's ecclesiastical household, and whose greatness 
that prelate had foreseen and prophesied. Did no 
shadow of the scaffold ever fall across the statesman's 
thoughts, as he looked upon that handsome, manly boy, 
and thought of the troublous times that were raging 
about them ? Morton, aged ninety, died in 1 500 ; More, 
aged fifty-five, in 1535. Strange fate, indeed, was that, 
and as inscrutable as mournful, which gave to those 
who in life had been like father and son such a 
ghastly association in death ! 1 They show you the 
place where Becket was murdered, and the stone steps, 
worn hollow by the thousands upon thousands of de- 
vout pilgrims who, in the days before the Reformation, 
crept up to weep and pray at the costly, resplendent 
shrine of St. Thomas. The bones of Becket, as all the 
world knows, were, by command of Henry the Eighth, 
burnt, and scattered to the winds, while his shrine was 
pillaged and destroyed. Neither tomb nor scutcheon 
commemorates him here, — but the cathedral itself is 

1 St. Dunstan's church was connected with the Convent of St. Gregory. 
The Roper family, in the time of Henry the Fourth, founded a chapel in 
it, in which are two marble tombs, commemorative of them, and under- 
neath which is their burial vault. Margaret Roper, Sir Thomas More's 
daughter, obtained her father's head, after his execution, and buried it 
here. The vault was opened in 1835, — when a new pavement was laid 
in the chancel of this church, — and persons descending into it saw the 
head, in a leaden box shaped like a beehive, open in front, set in a niche 
in the wall, behind an iron grill. 





frj ->%¥ 



xx A GLIMPSE OF CANTERBURY 229 

his monument. There it stands, with its grand columns 
and glorious arches, its towers of enormous size and 
its long vistas of distance, so mysterious and awful, its 
gloomy crypt where once the silver lamps sparkled and 
the smoking censers were swung, its tombs of mighty 
warriors and statesmen, its frayed and crumbling ban- 
ners, and the eternal, majestic silence with which it 
broods over the love, ambition, glory, defeat, and an- 
guish of a thousand years, dissolved now and ended in 
a little dust ! As the organ music died away I looked 
upward and saw where a bird was wildly flying to and 
fro, through the vast spaces beneath its lofty roof, in 
the vain effort to find some outlet of escape. Fit em- 
blem, truly, of the human mind which strives to com- 
prehend and to utter the meaning of this marvellous 
fabric ! 




CHAPTER XXI 



THE SHRINES OF WARWICKSHIRE 



:882 




IGHT, in Stratford-upon-Avon — a sum- 
mer night, with large, solemn stars, a cool 
and fragrant breeze, and the stillness of 
perfect rest. From this high and grassy 
bank I look forth across the darkened 
meadows and the smooth and shining river, and see the 
little town where it lies asleep. Hardly a light is any- 
where visible. A few great elms, near by, are nodding 
and rustling in the wind, and once or twice a drowsy 
bird-note floats up from the neighbouring thicket that 
skirts the vacant, lonely road. There, at some distance, 
are the dim arches of Clopton's Bridge. In front — a 
graceful, shapely mass, indistinct in the starlight — rises 
the fair Memorial, Stratford's honour and pride. Fur- 
ther off, glimmering through the tree-tops, is the dusky 
spire of Trinity, keeping its sacred vigil over the dust 
of Shakespeare. Nothing here is changed. The same 
tranquil beauty, as of old, hallows this place ; the same 
sense of awe and mystery broods over its silent shrines 

230 



CHAr. XXI 



THE SHRINES OF WARWICKSHIRE 



231 



of everlasting renown. Long and weary the years have 
been since last I saw it ; but to-night they are remem- 
bered only as a fleeting and troubled dream. Here, 
once more, is the highest and noblest companionship 
this world can give. Here, once more, is the almost 
visible presence of the one magician who can lift the 




Stratford- upon- A von. 

soul out of the infinite weariness of common things and 
give it strength and peace. The old time has come 
back, and the bloom of the heart that I thought had all 
faded and gone. I stroll again to the river's brink, 
and take my place in the boat, and, trailing my hand 
in the dark waters of the Avon, forget every trouble 
that ever I have known. 



232 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

It is often said, with reference to memorable places, 
that the best view always is the first view. No doubt 
the accustomed eye sees blemishes. No doubt the 
supreme moments of human life are few and come but 
once ; and neither of them is ever repeated. Yet fre- 
quently it will be found that the change is in ourselves 
and not in the objects we behold. Scott has glanced at 
this truth, in a few mournful lines, written toward the 
close of his heroic and beautiful life. Here at Stratford, 
however, I am not conscious that the wonderful charm 
of the place is in any degree impaired. The town still 
preserves its old-fashioned air, its quaintness, its perfect 
cleanliness and order. At the Shakespeare cottage, in 
the stillness of the room where he was born, the spirits 
of mystery and reverence still keep their imperial state. 
At the ancient grammar-school, with its pent-house roof 
and its dark, sagging rafters, you still may see, in fancy, 
the unwilling schoolboy gazing upward absently at the 
great, rugged timbers, or looking wistfully at the sun- 
shine, where it streams through the little lattice windows 
of his prison. New Place, with its lovely lawn, its spa- 
cious garden, the ancestral mulberry and the ivy-covered 
well, will bring the poet before you, as he lived and 
moved, in the meridian of his greatness. Cymbeline, 
The Tempest, and A Winter s Talc, the last of his works, 
undoubtedly were written here ; and this alone should 
make it a hallowed spot. Here he blessed his young 
daughter on her wedding day ; here his eyes closed in 
the long last sleep ; and from this place he was carried 
to his grave in the chancel of Stratford church. I pass 
once again through the fragrant avenue of limes, the 
silent churchyard with its crumbling monuments, the 







«^ 



STRATFORD CHURCH. 






xxi THE SHRINES OF WARWICKSHIRE 233 

dim porch, the twilight of the venerable temple, and 
kneel at last above the ashes of Shakespeare. What 
majesty in this triumphant rest ! All the great labour 
accomplished. The universal human heart interpreted 
with a living voice. The memory and the imagination 
of mankind stored forever with words of sublime elo- 
quence and images of immortal beauty. The noble 
lesson of self-conquest — the lesson of the entire ade- 
quacy of the resolute, virtuous, patient human will — 
set forth so grandly that all the world must see its mean- 
ing and marvel at its splendour. And, last of all, death 
itself shorn of its terrors and made a trivial thing. 

There is a new custodian at New Place, and he will 
show you the little museum that is kept there — includ- 
ing the shovel-board from the old Falcon tavern across 
the way, on which the poet himself might have played 
— and he will lead you through the gardens, and descant 
on the mulberry and on the ancient and still unforgiven 
vandalism of the Rev. Francis Gastrell, by whom the 
Shakespeare mansion was destroyed (1759), and will 
pause at the well, and at the fragments of the founda- 
tion, covered now with stout screens of wire. There is 
a fresh and fragrant beauty all about these grounds, an 
atmosphere of sunshine, life, comfort and elegance of 
state, that no observer can miss. This same keeper 
also has the keys of the guild chapel, opposite, on which 
Shakespeare looked from his windows and his garden, 
and in which he was the holder of two sittings. You 
will enter it by the same porch through which he walked, 
and see the arch and columns and tall, mullioned win- 
dows on which his gaze has often rested. The interior is 
cold and barren now, for the scriptural wall-paintings, 



234 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

discovered there in 1804, under a thick coating of white- 
wash, have been obliterated and the wooden pews, 
which are modern, have not yet been embrowned by 
age. Yet this church, known beyond question as one 
of Shakespeare's personal haunts, will hold you with 
the strongest tie of reverence and sympathy. At his 
birthplace everything remains unchanged. The gentle 
ladies who have so long guarded and shown it still have 
it in their affectionate care. The ceiling of the room in 
which the poet was born — the room that contains " the 
Actor's Pillar " and the thousands of signatures on walls 
and windows — is slowly crumbling to pieces. Every 
morning little particles of the plaster are found upon 
the floor. The area of tiny, delicate iron laths, to sustain 
this ceiling, has more than doubled (1882) since I first 
saw it, in 1877. It was on the ceiling that Lord Byron 
wrote his name, but this has flaked off and disappeared. 
In the museum hall, once the Swan inn, they are form- 
ing a library ; and there you may see at least one Shake- 
spearean relic of extraordinary interest. This is the 
MS. letter of Richard Quiney — whose son Thomas 
became, in 1616, the husband of Shakespeare's youngest 
daughter, Judith — asking the poet for the loan of thirty 
pounds. It is enclosed between plates of glass in a 
frame, and usually kept covered with a cloth, so that 
the sunlight may not fade the ink. The date of this 
letter is October 25, 1598, and thirty English pounds 
then was a sum equivalent to about six hundred dollars 
of American money now. This is the only letter known 
to be in existence that Shakespeare received. Miss 
Caroline Chataway, the younger of the ladies who keep 
this house, will recite to you its text, from memory — 



THE SHRINES OF WARWICKSHIRE 



235 



giving a delicious old-fashioned flavour to its quaint 
phraseology and fervent spirit, as rich and strange as 
the odour of the wild thyme and rosemary that grow 
in her garden beds. This antique touch adds a wonder- 
ful charm to the relics of the past. I found it once 
more when sitting in the chimney-corner of Anne 
Hathaway's kitchen ; and again in the lovely little 
church at Charlecote, where a simple, kindly woman, 
not ashamed to reverence the place and the dead, stood 
with me at the tomb of the Lucys, and repeated from 
memory the tender, sincere, and eloquent epitaph with 
which Sir Thomas Lucy thereon commemorates his wife. 
The lettering is small and indistinct on the tomb, but 
having often read it I well knew how correctly it was 
then spoken. Nor shall I ever read it again without think- 
ing of that kindly, pleasant voice, the hush of the beauti- 
ful church, the afternoon sunlight streaming through the 
oriel window, and — visible through the doorway arch — 
the roses waving among the churchyard graves. 

In the days of Shakespeare's courtship, when he 
strolled across the fields to Anne Hathaway's cottage at 
Shottery, his path, we may be sure, ran through wild 
pasture-land and tangled thicket. A fourth part of 
England at that time was a wilderness, and the entire 
population of that country did not exceed five millions 
of persons. The Stratford-upon-Avon of to-day is still 
possessed of some of its ancient features ; but the 
region round about it then must have been rude and 
wild in comparison with what it is at present. If you 
walk in the foot-path to Shottery now you will pass be- 
tween low fences and along the margin of gardens, — 
now in the sunshine, and now in the shadow of larch 



236 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

and chestnut and elm, while the sweet air blows upon 
your face and the expeditious rook makes rapid wing to 
the woodland, cawing as he flies. In the old cottage, 
with its roof of thatch, its crooked rafters, its odorous 
hedges and climbing vines, its leafy well and its tan- 
gled garden, everything remains the same. Mrs. Mary 
Taylor Baker, the last living descendant of the Hatha- 
ways, born in this house, always a resident here, and 
now an elderly woman, still has it in her keeping, and 
still displays to you the ancient carved bedstead in the 
garret, the wooden settle by the kitchen fireside, the 
hearth at which Shakespeare sat, the great blackened 
chimney with its adroit iron " fish-back" for the better 
regulation of the tea-kettle, and the brown and tattered 
Bible, with the Hathaway family record. Sitting in an 
old arm-chair, in the corner of Anne Hathaway's bed- 
room, I could hear, in the perfumed summer stillness, 
the low twittering of birds, whose nest is in the cover- 
ing thatch and whose songs would awaken the sleeper 
at the earliest light of dawn. A better idea can be 
obtained in this cottage than in either the birthplace or 
any other Shakespearean haunt of what the real life 
actually was of the common people of England in 
Shakespeare's day. The stone floor and oak timbers of 
the Hathaway kitchen, stained and darkened in the 
slow decay of three hundred years, have lost no particle 
of their pristine character. The occupant of the cot- 
tage has not been absent from it more than a week 
during upward of half a century. In such a nook the 
inherited habits of living do not alter. "The thing that 
has been is the thing that shall be," and the customs of 
long ago are the customs of to-day. 



THE SHRINES OF WARWICKSHIRE 



237 



The Red Horse inn is now in the hands of William 
Gardner Colbourne, who has succeeded his uncle Mr. 
Gardner, and it is brighter than of old — without, how- 
ever, having parted with either its antique furniture or 
its delightful antique ways. The old mahogany and 
wax-candle period has not ended yet in this happy 
place, and you sink to sleep on a snow-white pillow, soft 
as down and fragrant as lavender. One important 
change is especially to be remarked. 
They have made a niche in a corner 
of Washington Irving's parlour, and 
in it have placed his arm-chair, re- 
cushioned and polished, and sequested 
from touch by a large sheet of plate- 
glass. The relic may still be seen, 
but the pilgrim can sit upon it no 
more. Perhaps it might be well to 
enshrine " Geoffrey Crayon's Sceptre" 
in a somewhat similar way. It could 
be fastened to a shield, displaying the 
American colours, and placed in this 
storied room. At present it is the tenant of a starred 
and striped bag, and keeps its state in the seclusion of 
a bureau ; nor is it shown except upon request — like 
the beautiful marble statue of Donne, in his shroud, 
niched in the chancel wall of St. Paul's cathedral. 1 




Washington Irving's 
Chair. 



1 A few effigies are all that remain of old St. Paul's. The most impor- 
tant and interesting of them is that shrouded statue of the poet John 
Donne, who was Dean of St. Paul's from 1621 to 163 1, dying in the latter 
year, aged 58. This is in the south aisle of the chancel, in a niche in the 
wall. You will not see it unless you ask the privilege. The other relics 
are in the crypt and in the churchyard. There is nothing to indicate 
the place of the grave of John of Gaunt or that of Sir Philip Sidney. Old 
St. Paul's was burned September 2, 1666. 



238 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

One of the strongest instincts of the English character 
is the instinct of permanence. It acts involuntarily, it 
pervades the national life, and, as Pope said of the 
universal soul, it operates unspent. Institutions seem 
to have grown out of human nature in this country, 
and are as much its expression as blossoms, leaves, 
and flowers are the expression of inevitable law. A 
custom, in England, once established, is seldom or never 
changed. The brilliant career, the memorable achieve- 
ment, the great character, once fulfilled, takes a per- 
manent shape in some kind of outward and visible 
memorial, some absolute and palpable fact, which 
thenceforth is an accepted part of the history of the 
land and the experience of its people. England means 
stability — the fireside and the altar, home here and 
heaven hereafter; and this is the secret of the power 
that she wields in the affairs of the world, and the charm 
that she diffuses over the domain of thought. Such a 
temple as St. Paul's cathedral, such a palace as Hamp- 
ton Court, such a castle as that of Windsor or that of 
Warwick, is the natural, spontaneous expression of the 
English instinct of permanence ; and it is in memorials 
like these that England has written her history, with 
symbols that can perish only with time itself. At in- 
tervals her latent animal ferocity breaks loose — as it 
did under Henry the Eighth, under Mary, under Crom- 
well, and under James the Second, — and for a brief 
time ramps and bellows, striving to deface and deform 
the surrounding structure of beauty that has been slowly 
and painfully reared out of her deep heart and her sane 
civilisation. But the tears of human pity soon quench 
the fire of Smithfield, and it is only for a little while 



xxi THE SHRINES OF WARWICKSHIRE 239 

that the Puritan soldiers play at nine-pins in the nave 
of St. Paul's. This fever of animal impulse, this wild 
revolt of petulant impatience, is soon cooled ; and then 
the great work goes on again, as calmly and surely as 
before — that great work of educating mankind to the 
level of constitutional liberty, in which England has 
been engaged for well-nigh a thousand years, and in 
which the American Republic, though sometimes at 
variance with her methods and her spirit, is, neverthe- 
less, her follower and the consequence of her example. 
Our Declaration was made in i yj6 : the Declaration to 
the Prince of Orange is dated 1689, and the Bill of 
Rights 1628, while Magna Charta was secured in 121 5. 
Throughout every part of this sumptuous and splendid 
domain of Warwickshire the symbols of English stability 
and the relics of historic times are numerous and deeply 
impressive. At Stratford the reverence of the nine- 
teenth century takes its practical, substantial form, not 
alone in the honourable preservation of the ancient 
Shakespearean shrines, but in the Shakespeare Memo- 
rial. That fabric, though mainly due to the fealty of 
England, is also, to some extent, representative of the 
practical sympathy of America. Several Americans — 
Edwin Booth, Herman Vezin, M. D. Conway, and W. H. 
Reynolds among them — were contributors to the fund 
that built it, and an American gentlewoman, Miss Kate 
Field, has worked for its cause with excellent zeal, 
untiring fidelity, and good results. (Miss Mary Ander- 
son acted — 1885 — in the Memorial Theatre, for its 
benefit, presenting for the first time in her life the char- 
acter of Rosalind.) It is a noble monument. It stands 
upon the margin of the Avon, not distant from the 



240 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

church of the Holy Trinity, which is Shakespeare's 
grave ; so that these two buildings are the conspicuous 
points of the landscape, and seem to confront each 
other with sympathetic greeting, as if conscious of their 
sacred trust. The vacant land adjacent, extending 
between the road and the river, is a part of the Memo- 
rial estate, and is to be converted into a garden, with 
pathways, shade-trees, and flowers, — by means of which 
the prospect will be made still fairer than now it is, and 
will be kept forever unbroken between the Memorial 
and the Church. Under this ample roof are already 
united a theatre, a library, and a hall of pictures. The 
drop-curtain, illustrating the processional progress of 
Queen Elizabeth when " going to the Globe Theatre," 
is gay but incorrect. The divisions of seats are in con- 
formity with the inconvenient arrangements of the 
London theatre of to-day. Queen Elizabeth heard 
plays in the hall of the Middle Temple, the hall of 
Hampton Palace, and at Greenwich and at Richmond ; 
but she never went to the Globe Theatre. In historic 
temples there should be no trifling with historic themes ; 
and surely, in a theatre of the nineteenth century, dedi- 
cated to Shakespeare, while no fantastic regard should 
be paid to the usages of the past, it would be tasteful 
and proper to blend the best of ancient ways with all 
the luxury and elegance of these times. It is much, 
however, to have built what can readily be made a 
lovely theatre ; and meanwhile, through the affectionate 
generosity of friends in all parts of the world, the library 
shelves are continually gathering treasures, and the hall 
of paintings is growing more and more the imposing 
expository that it was intended to be, of Shakespearean 



XXI THE SHRINES OF WARWICKSHIRE 241 

poetry and the history of the English stage. Many 
faces of actors appear upon those walls — from Garrick 
to Edmund Kean, from Macready to Henry Irving, 
from Kemble to Edwin Booth, from Mrs. Siddons to 
Ellen Terry, Ada Rehan, and Mary Anderson. Prom- 
inent among the pictures is a spirited portrait of Garrick 
and his wife, playing at cards, wherein the lovely, laugh- 
ing lady archly discloses that her hands are full . of 
hearts. Not otherwise, truly, is it with sweet and gentle 
Stratford herself, where peace and beauty and the most 
hallowed and hallowing of poetic associations garner 
up, forever and forever, the hearts of all mankind. 

In previous papers upon this subject I have tried to 
express the feelings that are excited by personal con- 
tact with the relics of Shakespeare — the objects that 
he saw and the fields through which he wandered. 
Fancy would never tire of lingering in this delicious 
region of flowers and of dreams. From the hideous 
vileness of the social condition of London in the time 
of James the First, Shakespeare must indeed have re- 
joiced to depart into this blooming garden of rustic 
tranquillity. Here also he could find the surroundings 
that were needful to sustain him amid the vast and 
overwhelming labours of his final period. No man, 
however great his powers, can ever, in this world, escape 
from the trammels under which nature enjoins and per- 
mits the exercise of the brain. Ease, in the intellectual 
life, is always visionary. The higher a man's faculties 
the higher are his ideals, — toward which, under the 
operation of a divine law, he must perpetually strive, 
but to the height of which he will never absolutely 
attain. So, inevitably, it was with Shakespeare. But, 




"I 1 I , w 
Ijjji ;' fi « 



chap, xxi THE SHRINES OF WARWICKSHIRE 243 

although genius cannot escape from itself and is no 
more free than the humblest toiler in the vast scheme 
of creation, it may — and it must — sometimes escape 
from the world : and this wise poet, of all men else, 
would surely recognise and strongly grasp the great 
privilege of solitude amid the sweetest and most sooth- 
ing adjuncts of natural beauty. That privilege he 
found in the sparkling and fragrant gardens of War- 
wick, the woods, fields and waters of the Avon, where 
he had played as a boy, and where love had laid its first 
kiss upon his lips and poetry first opened upon his 
inspired vision the eternal glories of her celestial world. 
It still abides there, for every gentle soul that can feel 
its influence — to deepen the glow of noble passion, to 
soften the sting of grief, and to touch the lips of worship 
with a fresh sacrament of patience and beauty. 



THE ANNE HATHAWAY COTTAGE. 

April, 1892. — A record that all lovers of the Shake- 
speare shrines have long wished to make can at last be 
made. The Anne Hathaway Cottage has been bought 
for the British Nation, and that building will henceforth 
be one of the Amalgamated Trusts that are guarded by 
the corporate authorities of Stratford. The other Trusts 
are the Birthplace, the Museum, and New Place. The 
Mary Arden Cottage, the home of Shakespeare's mother, 
is yet to be acquired. 




CHAPTER XXII 



A BORROWER OF THE NIGHT 

" I must become a borrower of the night, 
For a dark hour or twain"' — Macbeth. 




IDNIGHT has just sounded from the 
tower of St. Martin. It is a peaceful 
night, faintly lit with stars, and in the 
region round about Trafalgar Square a 
dream-like stillness broods over the dark- 
ened city, now slowly hushing itself to its brief and 
troubled rest. This is the centre of the heart of modern 
civilisation, the middle of the greatest city in the world 
— the vast, seething alembic of a grand future, the 
stately monument of a deathless past. Here, alone, in 
my quiet room of this old English inn, let me meditate 
a while on some of the scenes that are near me — the 
strange, romantic, sad, grand objects that I have seen, 
the memorable figures of beauty, genius, and renown that 
haunt this classic land. 

How solemn and awful now must be the gloom within 



the walls of the Abbey 



A walk of only a few minutes 
244 



1 

ft?, 




Church of St. Martin. 



246 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

would bring me to its gates — the gates of the most 
renowned mausoleum on earth. No human foot to-night 
invades its sacred precincts. The dead alone possess it. 
I see, upon its gray walls, the marble figures, white and 
spectral, staring through the darkness. I hear the night- 
wind moaning around its lofty towers and faintly sob- 
bing in the dim, mysterious spaces beneath its fretted 
roof. Here and there a ray of starlight, streaming 
through the sumptuous rose window, falls and lingers, 
in ruby or emerald gleam, on tomb, or pillar, or dusky 
pavement. Rustling noises, vague and fearful, float 
from those dim chapels where the great kings lie in 
state, with marble effigies recumbent above their bones. 
At such an hour as this, in such a place, do the dead 
come out of their graves ? The resolute, implacable 
Queen Elizabeth, the beautiful, ill-fated Queen of Scots, 
the royal boys that perished in the Tower, Charles the 
Merry and William the Silent — are these, and such 
as these, among the phantoms that fill the haunted 
aisles ? What a wonderful company it would be, for 
human eyes to behold ! And with what passionate 
love or hatred, what amazement, or what haughty scorn, 
its members would look upon each other's faces, in this 
miraculous meeting ? Here, through the glimmering, 
icy waste, would pass before the watcher the august 
shades of the poets of five hundred years. Now would 
glide the ghosts of Chaucer, Spenser, Jonson, Beau- 
mont, Dryden, Cowley, Congreve, Addison, Prior, Camp- 
bell, Garrick, Burke, Sheridan, Newton, and Macaulay 
— children of divine genius, that here mingled with the 
earth. The grim Edward, who so long ravaged Scot- 
land; the blunt, chivalrous Henry, who conquered 



xxn A BORROWER OF THE NIGHT 247 

France ; the lovely, lamentable victim at Pomf ret, and 
the harsh, haughty, astute victor at Bosworth ; James 
with his babbling tongue, and William with his impas- 
sive, predominant visage — they would all mingle with 
the spectral multitude and vanish into the gloom. 
Gentler faces, too, might here once more reveal their 
loveliness and their grief — Eleanor de Bohun, broken- 
hearted for her murdered lord ; Elizabeth Claypole, the 
meek, merciful, beloved daughter of Cromwell ; Matilda, 
Queen to Henry the First, and model of every grace 
and virtue ; and sweet Anne Neville, destroyed — if his 
enemies told the truth — by the politic craft of Gloster. 
Strange sights, truly, in the lonesome Abbey to-night ! 

In the sombre crypt beneath St. Paul's cathedral how 
thrilling now must be the heavy stillness ! No sound 
can enter there. No breeze from the upper world can 
stir the dust upon those massive sepulchres. Even in 
day-time that shadowy vista, with its groined arches 
and the black tombs of Wellington and Nelson and the 
ponderous funeral-car of the Iron Duke, is seen with a 
shudder. How strangely, how fearfully the mind would 
be impressed, of him who should wander there to-night ! 
What sublime reflections would be his, standing beside 
the ashes of the great admiral, and thinking of that 
fiery, dauntless spirit — so simple, resolute, and true — 
who made the earth and the sea alike resound with the 
splendid tumult of his deeds. Somewhere beneath this 
pavement is the dust of Sir Philip Sidney — buried 
here before the destruction of the old cathedral, in the 
great fire of 1666 — and here, too, is the nameless grave 
of the mighty Duke of Lancaster, John of Gaunt. 
Shakespeare was only twenty-two years old when Sidney 



24S SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap, xxn 

fell, at the battle of Zutphen, and, being then resident 
in London, he might readily have seen, and doubtless 
did see, the splendid funeral procession with which the 
body of that heroic gentleman — radiant and immortal 
example of perfect chivalry — was borne to the tomb. 
Hither came Henry of Hereford — returning from exile 
and deposing the handsome, visionary, useless Richard 

— to mourn over the relics of his father, dead of sorrow 
for his son's absence and his country's shame. Here, 
at the venerable age of ninety-one, the glorious brain of 
Wren found rest at last, beneath the stupendous temple 
that himself had reared. The watcher in the crypt to- 
night would see, perchance, or fancy that he saw, those 
figures from the storied past. Beneath this roof — the 
soul and the perfect symbol of sublimity ! — are ranged 
more than fourscore monuments to heroic martial per- 
sons who have died for England, by land or sea. Here, 
too, are gathered in everlasting repose the honoured 
relics of men who were famous in the arts of peace. 
Reynolds and Opie, Lawrence and West, Landseer, 
Turner, Cruikshank, and many more, sleep under the 
sculptured pavement where now the pilgrim walks. For 
fifteen centuries a Christian church has stood upon this 
spot, and through it has poured, with organ strains and 
glancing lights, an endless procession of prelates and 
statesmen, of poets and warriors and kings. Surely 
this is hallowed and haunted ground ! Surely to him 
the spirits of the mighty dead would be very near, who 

— alone, in the darkness — should stand to-night within 
those sacred walls, and hear, beneath that awful dome, 
the mellow thunder of the bells of God. 

How looks, to-night, the interior of the chapel of the 



250 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

Foundling hospital ? Dark and lonesome, no doubt, 
with its heavy galleries and sombre pews, and the great 
organ — Handel's gift — standing there, mute and grim, . 
between the ascending tiers of empty seats. But never, 
in my remembrance, will it cease to present a picture 
more impressive and touching than words can say. 
Scores of white-robed children, rescued from shame and 
penury by this noble benevolence, were ranged around 
that organ when I saw it, and, with artless, frail little 
voices, singing a hymn of praise and worship. Well- 
nigh one hundred and fifty years have passed since this 
grand institution of charity — the sacred work and 
blessed legacy of Captain Thomas Coram — was estab- 
lished in this place. What a divine good it has accom- 
plished, and continues to accomplish, and what a pure 
glory hallows its founder's name ! Here the poor 
mother, betrayed and deserted, may take her child and 
find for it a safe and happy home and a chance in life 
— nor will she herself be turned adrift without sym- 
pathy and help. The poet and novelist George Croly 
was once chaplain of the Foundling hospital, and he 
preached some noble sermons there ; but these were 
thought to be above the comprehension of his usual 
audience, and he presently resigned the place. Sidney 
Smith often spoke in this pulpit, when a young man. 
It was an aged clergyman who preached there within 
my hearing, and I remember he consumed the most 
part of an hour in saying that a good way in which 
to keep the tongue from speaking evil is to keep the 
heart kind and pure. Better than any sermon, though, 
was the spectacle of those poor children, rescued out 
of their helplessness and reared in comfort and affec- 



A BORROWER OF THE NIGHT 



251 



tion. . Several fine works of art are owned by this hos- 
pital and shown to visitors — paintings by Gainsborough 
and Reynolds, and a portrait of Captain Coram, by Ho- 
garth. May the 
turf lie lightly 
on him, and dai- 
sies and violets 
deck his hal- 
lowed grave ! 
No man ever did 
a better deed 
than he, and the 
darkest night 
that ever was 
cannot darken 
his fame. 

How dim and 
silent now are 
all those narrow 
and dingy little 
streets and lanes 
around Paul's 
churchyard and 
the Temple, 
where Johnson 
and Goldsmith 
loved to ramble ! 
More than once 
have I wandered there, in the late hours of the night, 
meeting scarce a human creature, but conscious of a 
royal company indeed, of the wits and poets and play- 
ers of a far-off time. Darkness now, on busy Smith- 




Middle Tejnple Lane. 



252 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap. 

field, where once the frequent, cruel flames of bigotry 
shed forth a glare that sickened the light of day. 
Murky and grim enough to-night is that grand pro- 
cessional walk in St. Bartholomew's church, where 
the great gray pillars and splendid Norman arches of 
the twelfth century are mouldering in neglect and 
decay. Sweet to fancy and dear in recollection, the 
old church comes back to me now, with the sound 
of children's voices and the wail of the organ strangely 
breaking on its pensive rest. Stillness and peace 
over arid Bunhill Fields — the last haven of many a 
Puritan worthy, and hallowed to many a pilgrim as 
the resting-place of Bunyan and of Watts. In many a 
park and gloomy square the watcher now would hear 
only a rustling of leaves or the fretful twitter of half- 
awakened birds. Around Primrose Hill and out toward 
Hampstead many a night-walk have I taken, that 
seemed like rambling in a desert — so dark and still are 
the walled houses, so perfect is the solitude. In Drury 
Lane, even at this late hour, there would be some move- 
ment ; but cold and dense as ever the shadows are rest- 
ing on that little graveyard behind it, where Lady 
Dedlock went to die. To walk in Bow Street now, — 
might it not be to meet the shades of Waller and 
Wycherley and Betterton, who lived and died there ; to 
have a greeting from the silver-tongued Barry ; or to 
see, in draggled lace and ruffles, the stalwart figure and 
flushed and roystering countenance of Henry Fielding? 
Very quiet now are those grim stone chambers in the 
terrible Tower of London, where so many tears have 
fallen and so many noble hearts been split with sorrow. 
Does Brackenbury still kneel in the cold, lonely, vacant 



A BORROWER OF THE NIGHT 



253 



chapel of St. John ; or the sad ghost of Monmouth 
hover in the chancel of St. Peter's ? How sweet to- 
night would be the rustle of the ivy on the dark walls 
of Hadley church, where late I breathed the rose-scented 

thrush, and blessed, with 



kindness that makes such 



air and heard the warbling 
a grateful heart, the loving 
beauty in the world ! 
Out there on the hill- 
side of Highgate, pop- 
ulous with death, the 
starlight gleams on 
many a ponderous 
tomb and the white 
marble of many a 
sculptured statue, 
where dear and fa- 
mous names will lure 
the traveller's foot- 
steps for years to 
come. There Lynd- 
hurst rests, in honour 
and peace, and there 
is hushed the tuneful 
voice of Dempster — 
never to be heard any more, either when snows are 
flying or "when green leaves come again." Not many 
days have passed since I stood there, by the humble 
gravestone of poor Charles Harcourt, that fine actor, 
and remembered all the gentle enthusiasm with which 
(1877) ne spoke to me of the character of Jaques — 
which he loved — and how well he repeated the im- 
mortal lines upon the drama of human life. For him 




The Castle Inn. 



254 SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND chap, xxii 

the "strange, eventful history" came early and sud- 
denly to an end. In that ground, too, I saw the sculp- 
tured medallion of the well-beloved George Honey — 
"all his frolics o'er" and nothing left but this. Many 
a golden moment did we have, old friend, and by me 
thou art not forgotten ! The lapse of a few years 
changes the whole face of life ; but nothing can ever 
take from us our memories of the past. Here, around 
me, in the still watches of the night, are the faces that 
will never smile again, and the voices that will speak 
no more — Sothern, with his silver hair and bright and 
kindly smile, from the spacious cemetery of Southamp- 
ton ; and droll Harry Beckett and poor Adelaide Neil- 
son from dismal Brompton. And if I look from yonder 
window I shall not see either the lions of Landseer or 
the homeless and vagrant wretches who sleep around 
them ; but high in her silver chariot, surrounded with 
all the pomp and splendour that royal England knows, 
and marching to her coronation in Westminster Abbey, 
the beautiful figure of Anne Boleyn, with her dark eyes 
full of triumph and her torrent of golden hair flashing 
in the sun. On this spot is written the whole history 
of a mighty empire. Here are garnered up such loves 
and hopes, such memories and sorrows, as can never be 
spoken. Pass, ye shadows ! Let the night wane and 
the morning break. 



THE END 



THE WORKS OF MR. WILLIAM WINTER. 



Just Published. 

Shadows of the Stage. 

Second Series. 
i8mo, cloth, gilt top, 75 cents. 

*#* Also a limited edition, printed on laid paper, with ample 
margins, $2.00. 



Shakespeare's England. Old Shrines and Ivy. 

181110, cloth, gilt top, 75 cents. l8mo i cloth > S nt to P> 75 cents. 



Gray Days and Gold. 



Shadows of the Stage. 

First Series. 



181110, cloth, gilt top, 75 cents. ' iSmo, cloth, gilt top, 75 cents. 

The above four volumes, uniformly bound in half calf or half morocco, in 
a box, $8.00. 

*»* Also a limited edition, printed on laid paper with ample 
margins, four volumes, in a box, $8.00. 



Wanderers. 

Being a Collection of the Poems of William Winter. New Edition, Revised 
and Enlarged. With a Portrait of the Author. i8rno, cloth, gilt top, 
75 cents. 

*#* Also a limited large-paper edition, printed on English hand- 
made paper. Price $2.50. 



George William Curtis. With Portrait. 

181110, cloth, gilt top, 75 cents. 



In the Press. 

The Life and Art of Edwin Booth. 

i2mo, cloth. 
%* Also a limited edition on large paper, with proof illus- 



SHAKESPEARE'S ENGLAND. 

New Edition. i8mc, cloth, gilt top, 75 cents. 

" To him England is the 'old home'; historical and romantic asso- 
ciations cluster around his path wherever he goes ; and he sets down 
his impressions with a felicity of language that is in itself a source of con- 
tinuous enjoyment. Whether rambling about London in pursuit of mem- 
ories of a great and noble past, visiting Shakespeare's country, studying 
the grandeur of Warwick and Kenilworth, or tarrying at the shrines of 
Warwickshire, Mr. Winter is always a gracious, sympathetic, and edify- 
ing guide." — Boston Beacon. 

"Mr. Winter's sympathy with English antiquity is profound; he 
writes reverently, meditatively, and eloquently. As an interpreter of the 
thoughts and feelings of Americans who approach historic and literary 
England with intelligent appreciation of what it all stands for to them, he 
is delightful, wise, and impressive." — New York Times. 

"In the graceful English of which Mr. Winter is a master, he dis- 
courses as only a poet could, and surely as Shakespeare himself would 
have desired, on Stratford-on-Avon and its environs — the most satisfactory 
account of the place we recall — and on the kindred topic, ' The Shrines of 
Warwickshire.' Other chapters describe with the same enthusiasm and 
delicate appreciation the old churches and literary shrines of London, 
Westminster Abbey, Canterbury, Stoke-Pogis, Windsor, and other his- 
toric places. Every lover of Shakespeare should own, or at least read, the 
book." — Art Amateur. 

"He offers something more than guidance to the American traveller, 
lie is a convincing and eloquent interpreter of the august memories and 
venerable sanctities of the old country." — Saturday Review. 

" Enthusiastic and yet keenly critical notes and comments on English 
life and scenery." — Scotsman. 

" The book is delightful reading. . . . It is a delicious view of England 
wich this poet takes. It is indeed the noble, hospitable, merry, romance- 
haunted England of our fathers — the England which we know of in song 
and story." — Scribner's MontJilv. 



GRAY DAYS AND GOLD. 

New Edition. i8mo, cloth, gilt top, 75 cents. 

" This book, which is intended as a companion to ' Shakespeare's Eng- 
land,' relates to the gray days of an American wanderer in the British 
Islands, and to the gold of thought and fancy that can be found there. 
Mr. Winter's graceful and meditative style in his English sketches has 
recommended his earlier volume upon [Shakespeare's] England to many 
readers, who will not need urging to make the acquaintance of this com- 
panion-book, in which the traveller guides us through the quiet and roman- 
tic scenery of the mother-country with a mingled affection and sentiment 
of which we have had no example since Irving's day." — The Nation. 

" No more delightful guide to the homes and haunts of genius could 
any reader desire." — Kilmarnock Journal. 

" For those who are unable to visit the scenes, and have to be content 
with seeing through the eyes of others, a better description would be diffi- 
cult to find ; and to those who propose to visit the districts no more useful, 
informing, and pleasant companion could be recommended." — Glasgow 
Herald. 

" Mr. Winter, whether he writes in simple prose or tuneful verse, is 
always poetical, and it is one of his chief characteristics, as it is his great- 
est charm as a writer, that he not only perceives the poetic beauty of the 
scenes he visits, but that he makes his readers perceive it. There are more 
golden than gray days in this book, for Mr. Winter's thought is like to an 
Eldorado in its natural opulence of wealth ; it is always bright, warm, 
glowing with color, rich in feeling. . . . They who have never visited the 
scenes which Mr. Winter so charmingly describes will be eager to do so in 
order to realize his fine descriptions of them, and they who have already 
visited them will be incited by his eloquent recital of their attractions to 
repeat their former pleasant experiences."— Public Ledger, Philadelphia. 

" They show at their best their author's quick sympathy and clear in- 
sight into the essential in the works and the lives of those who have made 
recent English literature what it is— Burns, Scott, Byron, Matthew Arnold, 
Clough, and many others. He has followed where they walked, has sat 
beside their graves, has entered into their spirit." — Evangelist. 

" Much that is bright and best in our literature is brought once more to 
our dulled memories. Indeed, we know of but few volumes containing so 
much of observation, kindly comment, philosophy, and artistic weight as 
this unpretentious little book." — Chicago Herald. 

' s Is as friendly and good-humoured a book on English scenes as any 
American has written since Washington Irving." — Daily News, London. 



OLD SHRINES AND IVY. 

i8mo, cloth, gilt top, 75 cents. 

"This volume, in harmony with the edition of Mr. Winter's selected 
essays and poems published by Macmillan during this past year, contains 
some of his most charming work. The essays he lays as offerings upon 
the shrines of history and of literature. Mr. Winter may have gone in 
search of history, but his offerings — praise be to history that they lie upon 
her shrine — are bits from his wanderings in England, Scotland, and 
France, and of his ' lingering in lovely Warwickshire.' Here he medi- 
tated — and the thread runs through all the book — upon the divine poet with 
whose story and spirit the region is hallowed."— Journal of Education. 

" It is a thoughtful book, full of tender and reminiscent ideas strung 
together on the thread of history." — Appeal Avalanche. 

" We are glad to have these gatherings and meditations of a pure and 
classic dramatic scholar saved from the fate of what are aptly called 
1 fugitive ' productions." — New York Observer. 

" The sketches are written with the grace and sentiment that charac- 
terized so happily 'Gray Days and Gold,' and the shining thread of the 
author's Shakespearianism runs through them." — Nation. 

" A decidedly choice specimen of good literature is 'Old Shrines and 
Ivy,' by William Winter, devoted at the outset to English Cathedrals, the 
pleasing views along the road to them, the historical associations of the 
great buildings and their relations to Shakespeare's plays, and adding 
instructive critical notes on some of the plays and on Sheridan's ' School 
for Scandal,' and closing with a very hearty personal tribute to Mr. Long- 
fellow." — Christian Intelligencer. 

" It is pleasant to visit Arden in such sympathetic company as that of 
William Winter."— St. Paul Pioneer Press. 

"Those loving Shakespeare and his lovers should certainly see to it 
that this dainty little book is not only on their shelves, but thoroughly 
read and re-read." — American Hebrew. 

" No one else could have written these letters and essays. They 
are instinct with poetry, and they breathe that reverence for the great 
names of history and literature which seems almost to have been crushed 
out by the present idolatry of material achievement." — San Francisco 
Chronicle. 



SHADOWS OF THE STAGE. 

FIRST SERIES. 

i8mo, cloth, gilt top, 75 cents. 

*^.* Also a limited large-paper edition, $2.00. 

"His stage memories are models of the best dramatic criticism, not 
only in sympathetic understanding; of the subject, but in perfect courtesy 
and appreciation. "—Journal of Education. 

" Mr. William Winter's impressionable genius has seized upon the 
'shadows' of the stage, transforming them into enduring pictures of 
reality in this charming little book, in which we find chapters on Jefferson, 
Edwin Booth, McCullough, Adelaide Neilson, Irving, Ellen Terry, Mar - 
Anderson, the Florences, Ada Rehan, and others ; and the volume is on? 
of present interest and future value." — Boston Budget. 

"Taken one by one, and regarded in the light of their original inten- 
tion, Mr. Winter's essays present features of very high merit. He pos- 
sesses a full vocabulary, and uses it with freedom and vigour. His 
impulsive eloquence gives powerful and picturesque expression to catholic 
sympathies and cultured taste." — Saturday Keviezv. 

" Mr. Winter has long been known as the foremost of American 
dramatic critics, as a writer of very charming verse, and as a master in the 
lighter veins of English prose." — Chicago Herald. 

" He has the poise and sure judgment of long experience, the fine per- 
ception and cultured mind of a litterateur and man of the world, and a 
command of vivid and flexible language quite his own. One must look 
far for anything approaching it in the way of dramatic criticism ; only 
Lamb could write more delightfully of actors and acting. . . . Mr. Winter 
is possessed of that quality invaluable to a play-goer, a temperament finely 
receptive, sensitive to excellence ; and this it is largely which gives his 
dramatic writings their value. Criticism so luminous, kindly, genial, 
sympathetic, and delicately expressed fulfils its function to the utmost."— 
Milwaukee Sentinel. 

"This little book is in every way delightful. It gives us charming 
glimpses of personal character, exquisite bits of criticism, and the indefina- 
ble charm of stage life. ... No transcript of American life of to-day \v< >uld 
be complete without these pictures, and Mr. Winter has in a sense done a 
service to history in this exquisite little book." — Appeal Avalanche. 



SHADOWS OF THE STAGE. 

SECOND SERIES. 
i8mo, cloth, gilt top, 75 cents. 

* # * Also a limited large-paper edition, $2.00. 

" The reader is thrilled almost into the belief that he himself has seen 
and heard these great ones, so illuminating is the touch of this biographer. 
How fine are his discriminations ; how kindly is his severest censure !" — 
Philadelphia Record. 

"Mr. Winter's exquisite style lends a charm to every page of the 
'Shadows,' and there are many passages of analytical criticism that make 
it a valuable contribution to stage literature." — Dramatic Mirror. 

" It contains sketches of the elder Booth, who was probably the most 
original actor ever seen in America ; of Forrest ; of James H. Hackett, 
celebrated for his personation of Falstaff ; of John E. Owens ; of John 
Brougham ; of Modjeska, and of twenty others, either in some special or 
general aspect. An appreciative chapter is on Ada Rehan's acting." — 
Chicago Herald. 

" The essays . . . are significant not only as containing on the whole 
the best literary criticism of the drama in our language to-day, but as 
forming with the first series under its title, already published, a tolerably 
complete history of the American stage. . . . 

" Mr. Winter's rare gifts of insight, and his faculty of felicitous ex- 
pression are nowhere more conspicuous than in these papers, which em- 
brace a wide range of subject in their treatment of dramatic themes, and 
in their comment, commemorative and historical, upon actors, most of 
them contemporary, but not a few of whom have already joined the 
'shadows' on the other shore." — New York Home Journal. 

" An exceedingly entertaining contribution to the history of the Amer- 
ican drama." — Boston Beacon. 

" x\s long as men and women will want to hear and read about the 
kings and queens of tragedy and comedy, these memorials of the American 
stage with which Mr. Winter has been contemporaneous will be read with 
delight. . . . It is a rare intellectual pleasure to read, couched in this pure 
and crystalline English, the calm judgments of a man who is so unmistak- 
ably facile princeps in his art." — Newark Daily Advertiser. 



WANDERERS. 

Being a Collfction of the Poems of William Winter. 

New Edition, Revised and Enlarged. With a Portrait of the 
Author. i8mo, cloth, gilt top, 75 cents. 

* s * Also a limited large-paper edition, printed on English 
hand-made paper. Price, $2.50. 

"Free from cant and rant — clear-cut as a cameo, pellucid as a moun- 
tain brook. It may be derided as trite, borne, unimpassioned ; but in 
its own modest sphere it is, to our thinking, extraordinarily successful, 
and satisfies us far more than the pretentious mouthing which receives the 
seal of over-hasty approbation." — Athenceum. 

" They evince the true poetic spirit, and for daintiness, combined with 
elegance, depth, and power, rank with many of the best poems of the cen- 
tury. To any one unfamiliar with Mr. Winter's peculiar gift this appears 
to be strong praise, but in his little volume will be found many gems of 
rare purity and sentiment." — Minneapolis Tribune. 

" A most graceful and felicitous poet of occasions, Mr. Winter is yet 
more. He has the poet's temperament, with all its delicacy of intuitive 
insight, its susceptibility to beauty, and its ardent emotion. His music is 
all in minor chords, and if it is not the heroic call to life, the triumphant 
faith in the life to come, it is so sympathetic and so sweet in its sadness 
that it charms the imagination like a plaintive melody heard in the 
shadowy twilight." — Boston Budget. 

"Mr. Winter has gone back for his inspiration to^the English lyrical 
poets of the Elizabethan period and their successors, who, in spite of 
many changes in taste, still retain a secure place in our affections ; and 
their sweetness, simplicity, and spontaneity are easily traceable in his 
limpid verse." — Home Journal {New Yo> k). 

" Whatever the theme of his song, he gives it that exquisite finish and 
imparts to it that true poetic touch that cannot fail to charm the reader 
who is blessed with a keen appreciation of the high, beautiful, and true 
elements of poetry. He is graceful, harmonious, spontaneous, apprecia- 
tive, and strong." — Boston Home Journal. 

"... A collection of some poems as true as any that have been 
penned in the language for a century. The commendation is a strong 
one, but it is only just. Mr. Winter in every verse gives full testimony of 
the possession of the real poetic spirit." — Chicago Times. 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 

With Portrait. i8mo, cloth, 75 cents. 

" Mr. Winter easily ranks among the most justly appreciative of critics 
and the most graceful of writers, and also was intimately acquainted with 
Mr. Curtis. From any point of view this eulogy commands a high 
degree of admiration, and will be read with wide attention and interest. 
It is a literary treasure in itself apart from its theme." — Congregation- 
alist. 

"It is the affectionate tribute of one who was a firm and intimate 
friend of the dead scholar and who knew the good qualities which were 
his. It is eloquent and pathetic in many instances, and full of reminis- 
cence." — Chicago Times. 

" A splendid tribute to one of the foremost men of letters America has 
produced." — Chicago Herald. 

" William Winter's tender, appreciative, eloquent, and just eulogy on 
George William Curtis is rightly published in book form and will be read 
and cherished by thousands of earnest Americans. . . . Mr. Winter has 
drawn a portrait full of color and feeling." — Boston Beacon. 

"A fragrant tribute that now, embalmed between the covers of a 
book, will shed lasting sweetness." — Philadelphia Record. 

" Mr. Winter's tribute to the memory of his lifelong friend is not a 
task done perfunctorily. Manifestly his heart inspired the words that he 
spoke. The verdict of the future respecting Curtis's rank as an author 
as a man of letters, as an orator, and as a citizen, can hardly be made up 
without a reference to this tiny volume ; for it embodies from the experi- 
ence and observation of a clear-sighted contemporary a summary of the 
moral and intellectual forces that environed Curtis from his youth up. It 
shows that a thorough-going biography of the man would mean a history 
of the literature and politics of the nation during a most important 
period." — New York Tribune. 



In the Press. 
THE LIFE AND ART OF EDWIN BOOTH. 

T2mo, cloth. 

*w* Also a limited edition on large paper, with proof 
Illustrations. 



MACMILLAN & CO., 

66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK. 



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